October 18, 2013 01:14 PM UTC

Surprised Magpul Hasn't Left Colorado? Don't Be

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Boulder Daily Camera's John Aguilar reports:

State Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, read from the floor of the Colorado House of Representatives a message from the CEO of Magpul Industries, the Erie-based weapons accessory maker, that his company would leave Colorado if the Legislature passed a measure banning the sale of magazines containing more than 15 rounds.

Saine gave that speech in February, the Legislature passed the magazine-limits bill in March, and Magpul announced in April that it had started making certain weapons accessories out of state. But on Thursday — a full six months after the company made its much-ballyhooed break from the Centennial State — the parking lot at Magpul's headquarters in Erie was filled with cars, and a receptionist greeted visitors in the front lobby.

The company's seeming inability to once and for all pull up stakes and exit Colorado has gone from a point of curiosity among gun enthusiasts, who loudly backed the company's decision half a year ago to move, to a source of annoyance that threatens to hurt Magpul's reputation and business.

Magpul's threats to leave the state of Colorado to protect the company's "principles" during the debate over House Bill 1224 were repeatedly invoked by Republican lawmakers as proof of the economic harm the legislation would do to the state. Since then, we've seen that the GOP-forecast "boycott" of hunters visiting from Colorado did not materialize, and all of the wacky "unintended consequences" of this law, and the new law requiring background checks for most gun sales, have been proven false.

During the time after House Bill 1224 passed, Magpul reaped untold profits from the "emergency" sale of its products in Colorado before the new law took effect. In this way, Magpul followed a formulaic approach of hyping up new, proposed, or even imaginary gun restrictions to provoke panic buying of their products. There's an argument that much of the nutty conspiracy theory stuff about Barack Obama and the United Nations has served its purpose simply by boosting the sale of guns and related products.

Since nothing in House Bill 1224 actually stops them from manufacturing their products in Colorado, and Colorado is, even after House Bill 1224, a hell of a lot nicer place to live than Texas, we expect that at some point Magpul will announce they are "staying to fight" instead of "cutting and running." We would be shocked if Magpul actually left Colorado prior to the innumerable attempts Republicans are guaranteed to make next year to repeal HB-1224–since they can use threats to leave, "for real" this time, as leverage again just as they did this year. Hell, they can probably get away with that for at least a couple of years before nobody buys it anymore. Before then, Republicans could retake the state and repeal the law, Dave Kopel and the sheriffs could win their longshot lawsuit, or U.N. stormtroopers under dictator Hillary Clinton could make the whole damn question irrelevant!

This is the upside to being full of crap, folks. There's always something new you can say.