2014 SHOT Show – Gov. Rick Perry

The 2014 SHOT Show brought a lot of people to Las Vegas including Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX). While he doesn’t say so in the video below, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he was doing some industrial recruiting while in Las Vegas.

I’m sorry that Perry blew up in the 2012 GOP race for president. While he might not have been able to name a third cabinet department he would cut, I think he does have a good understanding of what businesses need to succeed unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office.

This Doesn’t Make Sense To Me

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Remington Arms is planning to invest $20 million in an upgrade to its Ilion, New York plant. The news comes from local politicians who had a meeting on Wednesday with the company.

Local media outlets report that three senators and three Assembly
members met with Remington officials on Wednesday to discuss what they
could do to ensure the company keeps its plant in the Herkimer County
village of Ilion, where Remington employs about 1,200 people.

The report goes on to say that Remington themselves has no comment on the news.

Local news station WKTV Utica has more on the story. The story of the meeting of the New York legislators with senior officials from Remington Arms was the lead story on their evening broadcast.

The senior officials involved were Otto Weigl, senior vice president government and legislative affairs,
Jonathan Sprole, general counsel, and Paul Merz, Ilion plant manager. This meeting is balanced out by a meeting between Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Freedom Group CEO George Kollitides in Austin, Texas. Perry tweeted a picture of himself with Kollitides while holding what appears to be a Remington Defense AR-15 and wearing a Remington jacket on March 1st.

As I said in the headline, it doesn’t make sense for Remington to invest money in plant and equipment upgrades to the Ilion plant given the NY SAFE law and the anti-gun fervor of New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That said, it could be used as a bargaining chip with the industrial and economic development teams of other states that are seeking to have the plant move to their state.

The reality is that it isn’t easy to relocate a plant of the size of the Remington plant in Ilion. While building a new plant in another state or moving the machinery wouldn’t be hard,  it would be hard to replicate the workforce. I could see Remington moving the AR, pistol, and semi-auto rifle production out of that plant and leaving the shotgun and bolt-action rifle manufacturing there. In a way that would make sense as the pistol production could be shifted to the Para USA plant in North Carolina and the AR and other semi-auto production could go to a new plant anywhere.

As with all of these things, we’ll see.

At Least One Mega-State Governor Gets It

Unlike Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, there is one governor of a mega-state that actually gets it. That governor is Rick Perry of Texas. His comments today on the calls for more gun control make a lot more sense that the hysteria we hear from the gun prohibitionists in and out of DC.


“The Vice President’s committee was appointed in response to the tragedy at Newtown, but very few of his recommendations have anything to do with what happened there.

“Guns require a finger to pull the trigger. The sad young man who did that in Newtown was clearly haunted by demons and no gun law could have saved the children in Sandy Hook Elementary from his terror.

“There is evil prowling in the world – it shows up in our movies, video games and online fascinations, and finds its way into vulnerable hearts and minds. As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children.

“In fact, the piling on by the political left, and their cohorts in the media, to use the massacre of little children to advance a pre-existing political agenda that would not have saved those children, disgusts me, personally. The second amendment to the Constitution is a basic right of free people and cannot be nor will it be abridged by the executive power of this or any other president.”

I know he bombed on the primary trail when running for president which is a real shame given his economic record in Texas and his strong support for the Second Amendment. I hope he’ll be one of the speakers at the NRA’s Annual Meeting in Houston.

Why Couldn’t He Have Done This Earlier

When I saw this video of Gov. Rick Perry shooting at the Palmetto State Armory range in Ridgeland, South Carolina, I thought to myself, “Why did he have to participate in all those stupid ‘debates’ when he should have just been doing this?”

Rick Perry is the Fred Thompson of this election cycle. He’s the guy you thought had tons of potential, a mostly good record, some decent ideas, and would be almost unbeatable – and then flamed out quickly.

I guess now, when you know in your heart of hearts that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the nomination, you might as well do stuff you enjoy while campaigning. Not to mention having lunch at Five Guys which I think is one of the best burger places around.

Texans Aren’t Stupid

Democrat running for governor could find simply owning a gun isn’t enough for Texas voters 

Bill White, Mayor of Houston, is the Democratic nominee for Governor of Texas. He thought that Texas gun owners might be impressed that he owns a Springfield 9mm and a shotgun. He also thought they might forget that he was aligned with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns until 2009. That was when he sought his first statewide office and was running against a pro-gun Democrat.

White says he quit because the group opposed a federal law that would have allowed conceal-carry permit holders to carry their firearms across state lines.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner questioned White’s reason for leaving the group, saying he only quit after he caught flak from pro-gun Democrat John Sharp when both were running for the U.S. Senate. White’s name had appeared earlier on a letter opposing the expansion of rights for conceal-carry permit holders.

“He’s totally lying,” Miner said. “He is anti-gun and he’ll do anything including lying to try to get elected.”

Unfortunately for Mayor White, he is running against Rick Perry who not only has a concealed carry permit but used his Ruger LCP to kill a coyote that was threatening his daughter’s Labrador Retriever pup.

Perry is rated A+ by the NRA and has been endorsed by the Texas State Rifle Association.

“He (White) went outside of the state of Texas and aligned himself with out-of-state mayors for heaven sakes,” said Alice Tripp, legislative director of the Texas State Rifle Association.

I guess that about says it all.