Last week, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy signed into law what advocacy groups are heralding as the strictest gun limits in the nation, including measures that expand the state’s list of banned ‘assault’ weapons and restrict magazine capacities to ten rounds — and it didn’t take long for one of Connecticut’s gun manufacturers to follow suit on a phenomenon that’s already started in other states.

A manufacturer of military-style rifles says it is leaving Connecticut and is encouraging other companies to do the same after last week’s signing of sweeping gun legislation. PTR Industries of Bristol said the bill approved by the General Assembly was “fraught with ambiguous definitions, insufficient considerations for the trade, conflicting mandates and disastrous consequences for the fundamental rights of the people of Connecticut.” In a statement, the company said it hopes to pick a site by summer and move by the end of the year. … John McNamara, vice president of sales, said PTR Industries has 42 employees. “Indirectly, we employ 15 to 20 local vendors at any given time who have up to 15 to 30 employees each,” he told CNN on Wednesday.

Nor did it take long for Texas Gov. Rick Perry to seize the dangling opportunity to attract jobs and businesses to the Lone Star State:

Gov. Rick Perry on Friday invited a gun manufacturer that has announced its intention to leave Connecticut to set up shop in Texas. … “Hey PTR…Texas is still wide open for business…come on down!,” the tweet read. Perry told MyFoxAustin.com he hopes to encourage gun manufacturers affected by gun restrictions in other states to relocate. “There is still a place where freedom is very much alive and well — freedom from over-taxation, freedom from over-regulation, freedom from over-litigation…and that place is called Texas,” Perry told the station.

Sure, this might only be one company and a handful of jobs, and hey, perhaps Connecticut just doesn’t really care about keeping the gun industry around, if their new law is any indication. Guns might seem like an economically niche issue, except that this is part of a much larger trend of residents and businesses relocating from longstanding blue-state urban hubs to less restrictive, less regulatory, and less tax-intensive red-states and their growing cities. Blue states better start looking at everything those red states are doing right, ’cause they’re quickly losing the competitive edge.