Henry Repeating Arms has been making guns at its Bayonne, New Jersey factory for decades, but those days will soon be coming to an end. The storied gun company announced this week that it’s pulling up its stakes in the Garden State and moving all of its operations to its existing facilities in Wisconsin. While anti-gunners in Trenton may not shed any tears over Henry’s departure, its absence means the loss of almost 150 good paying jobs in north Jersey, and continues the trend of firearms manufacturers fleeing blue states for friendlier locales across the country. 

Henry had already expanded its presence outside the state of New Jersey in recent years, including establishing its headquarters in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Now the firm will be consolidating its operations in the upper Midwest, and adding to its production capacity in its two factories in the town of Ladysmith. 

The company said in the statement that the move out of New Jersey accommodates the need for increased production capacity and better supports the company’s future growth driven by innovative firearms design.

“We are putting all of our eggs in one basket, the Wisconsin basket, because it makes us more efficient, more productive, and allows for more collaboration amongst our design and engineering teams, all while sustaining and enhancing Henry’s solid reputation for quality,” said Anthony Imperato, Founder and CEO of Henry Repeating Arms. “With about 400,000 square feet of cutting-edge manufacturing operations in four facilities within minutes of each other, Henry Repeating Arms is well positioned for its next chapter.”

I had the pleasure of attending a Friends of NRA dinner that Imperato held on the factory floor of Henry’s Bayonne plant several years ago, and while it’s sad to think that production in the facility will soon come to an end, it’s also completely understandable. In addition to the benefits outlined by Imperato in his statement, the company will no longer have to deal quite so directly with the hostility towards the firearms industry displayed by officials like Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Wisconsin isn’t a ruby-red state like Georgia, Texas, or Tennessee; where companies like Smith & Wesson, Remington, and Mossberg have expaned their own operations in recent years, but it’s still a much better environment than New Jersey for the firearms industry to do business. 

New Jersey’s loss is Wisconsin’s gain, and the dozens of new jobs that are heading to the small towns of Rice Lake and Ladysmith will lend a big economic boost to the area; not only in terms of the direct investment by the gun company, but the money that these new employees will be spending in local businesses. I’m also interested to see what the increased collaboration between the design and engineering teams leads to in terms of products on gun store shelves. Henry’s departure from the Garden State and its expanded investment in Wisconsin will undoubtably be good for the business, but it should prove beneficial for its customers as well.