Watch our extended interview with Mayor Stephens above
ILION -- Could New York’s new gun law force the Remington Arms company to move out of Ilion?
After the passage of the NY Safe Act two weeks ago, South Carolina Congressman Jeff Duncan publicly urged the Remington Arms parent company to move its Ilion, New York, plant to South Carolina.
“Doing so would help the company avoid the ‘enemies’ of the Second Amendment," said Duncan.
In a letter to the chief executive of the Freedom Group, which owns Remington Arms, Duncan wrote: “In South Carolina, we believe in the right to keep and bear arms.”
The attempt to lure the Remington plant out of state is not sitting well with the people of Ilion. "It would be a real shame for the Mohawk Valley," Nick Novier told CNY Central’s Jim Kenyon.
At the present time, there is no other industry to speak of. This is it.
The Remington Arms Company was established in Ilion in 1816. It currently employs 1,300 people from throughout the Mohawk Valley, just east of Utica.
Ilion mayor John Stephens said that by soliciting a major manufacturing company out of New York State, which is no stranger to manufacturing struggles, Congressman Duncan “crossed a line he shouldn’t have crossed.”
“It’s a 200 year manufacturing facility; I don’t want them to celebrate that in some other state. I don’t want them to celebrate that in some other village. I want them here, this is where they belong... Ilion is Remington and Remington is Ilion," Mayor Stephens added.
(Watch our extended interview with Mayor Stephens.)
A spokesman for the Freedom Group, owner of Remington Arms, has not returned our calls.
After the Newtown massacre, proponents of gun control pointed out that the Remington Bushmaster “assault rifle” used in the shooting was probably made in Ilion.
Mayor Stephens spoke publicly on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" on Monday.
