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February 10, 2014 11:44 AM UTC

Reminder: Magpul Played Everybody Like a Fiddle

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

magpulheadline

As reported by the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle's Becky Orr Friday, and apropos today with a bill to repeal Colorado's magazine limit law up for certain death debate in the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee:

The Wyoming State Loan and Investment Board approved a $13 million grant Thursday to help a company that makes magazines and other gun accessories move to Cheyenne.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of the grant to help recruit Magpul Industries, a company based in Erie, Colo. SLIB is made up of the top five elected officials in Wyoming…

The company is expected to be in temporary quarters in Cheyenne as early as this summer. The business will remain there while a new building is built.

The state and local investment in the relocation effort will reach about $17 million over 20 years. The return to the public is estimated at about $20 million.

Colorado-based gun accessory maker Magpul.
Colorado-based gun accessory maker Magpul.
​

Last Thursday, the Colorado Independent's Shelby Kinney-Lang published an in-depth look at Erie-based ammunition magazine maker Magpul's impending move to Cheyenne, and the millions in taxpayer-funded financial incentives they'll receive to do so–and as we've discussed in detail, how that move appears to have been in the offing long before Colorado passed any law limiting gun magazine capacity.

Magpul announced last month that it would be moving its manufacturing to Wyoming and headquarters to Texas, and it is now clear that financial considerations unsurprisingly dominated negotiations around the move.

Yet the expansion plan itself and the company’s financial bargaining never made news in all of the reporting around Magpul last spring during the gun-law debates at the capitol. The main narrative spinning around Magpul at the time was that the company would move as a political statement. As the conservative Colorado Observer put it, Magpul executives “announced they would leave in reaction to the Democratic state legislature’s passage of gun-control bills.”

But Wyoming and Texas offered financial incentives to Magpul in 2012, when the company began exploring how best to realize its expansion plans and long before the gun measures had even been introduced…

Magpul’s January press release announcing its plan to move to Wyoming and Texas seemed to suggest that 92 percent of its Colorado workforce would join the company outside the state. But Magpul’s Duane Liptak told the Denver Post that wasn’t the case, that most of the company’s employees would be left behind in Erie. Liptak did not respond to the Independent’s requests for clarification, though a story about Magpul in the [Casper] Star-Tribune states that “some” unknown number of employees will move with the company and that 184 positions will be available in Wyoming. A more recent AP story says Magpul will bring “90 new jobs” to Cheyenne.

We do expect that executives from Magpul will testify at today's hearing, and that the example of their leaving Colorado–expressed in plaintive terms as "jobs lost"–will be frequently invoked as a reason a central magazine limit law should be repealed. But as we've tried diligently to ensure our readers understand, there's much more to this story–from Colorado employees who may or may not move/commute to Cheyenne, to the millions of dollars Magpul was shopping other states for before Colorado's magazine limit law was ever introduced.

Debate the efficacy of the law all you want, but don't misrepresent what happened here.

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21 thoughts on “Reminder: Magpul Played Everybody Like a Fiddle”

  1. I mentioned this in the open thread, but the word from the capitol is at least 150 people will testify on the magazine bill today. No word on the the for/against split. 

    1. Hell, that's a lesson the entire firearms industry has well learned — manufacturing their junk wouldn't yield anywhere near their hoped got cash flow without the abetting of the NRA and RMGO alarmists and the unfounded fears they are constantly ginning up!

  3. While Magpul plucks away at their fiddle, the political string pulling will occur behind the scene by the Dem anti-gun cohort.  A couple Senate Dems are persuadable, but not in the House. 

  4. Economic Development, Dem style.  Colorado is much safer having the magizines manufactured 50 miles away in Wyoming.  Hopefully some of the people can keep thier jobs and communte.

    1. You just can't focus, can you?

      Once again, for your benefit, magpul got Texas and Wyoming taxpayers to give them a free ride. The deal was in the works long before any talk of Legislation re: firearm safety/control.

      Translation: They were moving because of the tax free deal.

      This is too much like babysitting

      1. And note the fact that Magpul got the incentives while downsizing their operation.  Layoff 185 workers, and hire just 90 new ones.  $13 million pot for the execs to spend as they please!

        No kidding — Magpul execs are laughing all the way to the bank

    2. You don't seem to get it. Democrats want these jobs gone. Energy too, let's export that to Wyoming next. Pretty soon it will be all pot farms and bicycle repair shops, with everyone on food stamps. A perfect Boulder hippie dystopia.

  5. Magpul Execs didn't testify.

    But we did hear that Magpul manufactured the PM30 used to kill 20 first-graders and 6 educators in Newtown.  Magpul's tagline on their logo is:

    Unfair Advantage.

    No kidding.  Those children had not a chance.

     

        1. I second that, Duke.

          We've had others like him, libertad and some handles I can't remember.

          But the mix and the recipe's pretty familiar. Threats, wild eyed "projections", disgusting and despicable statements.

          I wonder, is someone posting under a different handle?

  6.  I had to laugh at Rep. Saine's ending speech after the State committee killed the magazine limit repeal bill today. She was actually responding, I think, to Pols reporting on Magpul, as to why they were hiring within Colorado. She said that Magpul was hiring graphic designers to change all of the "Colorado" logos on the magazines to say "Wyoming". She also said that Wyoming, being sparsely populated, didn't have as many graphic designers as Colorado.

    I doubt if she had actually talked with Magpul HR, but it was nice spin.

  7. So you say, you political hack. You sound like you are holed up in your mom's basement, and you embarrass yourself.  You seem to know nothing about this country's political and historical heritage.  You have shown you don't know what a democrat is or what a republican is.  You don't seem to care about or understand our constitution, either.

    I want my real Republicans back.  But, then, I think they are now moderate Democrats.  So, what are you, conscienceless?  Just to be clear, that means unscrupulous, indicating you have no sense of honor or of noble behavior, beyond the pale of civilized society.  It doesn't have to be that way, unless you want it to be.  I think you know better, and you don't give a damn.

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