Bluegrass Beacon: Kentucky misses target with gun makers

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After Maryland passed draconian gun laws in spring 2013, weapons manufacturer Beretta decided to find another state for its planned $45 million expansion.

The company in August broke ground in Gallatin, Tenn., where it now is moving its entire manufacturing operations.

Tennessee economic development officials confirmed this week that while right-to-work was not the only factor determining where the company would relocate, “it was definitely part of our conversation with Beretta.”

One local official told me that Beretta “definitely confirmed” that Tennessee is indeed a right-to-work state and that company leaders questioned state and local officials about union policies before deciding to move there.

As we reported back in July, Beretta considered a site in central Kentucky’s Nelson County, which, along with Frankfort, offered free land and a kitchen sink-full of tax breaks and other goodies.

Also, it’s not like Kentucky has a problem with the Second Amendment. The Daily Beast recently ranked Kentucky “the most armed state” in America.

Generous incentives and strong protections for the right to bear arms should make the Bluegrass State a draw for weapons manufacturers.

Without a right-to-work law, though, it’s simply not hitting the target.

And it’s at least one of the reasons why Beretta chose to build its plant just 24 miles south of Kentucky’s border instead of along the Bluegrass Parkway.

The right-to-work state won – again – and the forced-unionism commonwealth lost – again.

Wouldn’t it be more progressive to set our state up for success in the form of attracting future gun manufacturers looking to move their operations to states where their employees can legally purchase the products they make?

Economic-development officials in Tennessee said right-to-work laws give them a distinct advantage in competing with Kentucky.

“We hope you don’t succeed,” in bringing right-to-work to Kentucky, said one local recruiter.

Beretta isn’t the only gun manufacturer that comes to the corral knowing what it wants – and what it’s going to do if it doesn’t happen.

For instance, after Colorado’s legislature and Gov. John Hickenlooper decided in 2012 to restrict law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment freedoms, Magpul Industries, which was in the process of planning a groundbreaking for a new facility in Colorado, instead decided to relocate its manufacturing, distribution and shipping operations to Wyoming, and its corporate office to Texas.

Both are right-to-work states; Colorado is not.

Magpul officials had barely finished announcing their changes before Longhorn State Gov. Rick Perry was offering the company a big Texas welcome.

“In Texas, we understand that freedom breeds prosperity, which is why we’ve built our economy around principles that allow employers to innovate, keep more of what they earn and create jobs,” Perry said.

It’s just hard for me to imagine such a big-vision statement emanating from the current Kentucky governor’s office.

It’s certainly a different approach.

While Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear is touting his legacy of making Kentuckians increasingly dependent on government for their health care and while his state struggles with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, governors and legislatures in Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, Michigan and Indiana are making decisions that create the environment that gives their people the kind of economic hope that Frankfort only jabbers about.

If Beshear and his supporters don’t like my analysis, they probably also cringe at the corporate creed laid out on Magpul’s website – especially the section entitled “Annoy the Establishment,” which declares: “Just as America’s Founding Fathers sought to promote individual rights and freedoms over those of the collective, Magpul also stands on the side of the individual. The natural enemy of the individual and innovation is the establishment and bureaucracy (which literally means ‘the power of the desk’). When we are annoying the establishment, we know we are effectively upholding our principles.”

Annoy away.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.