US Gun Town

A flag hangs at Remington Arms Co. in Ilion. The gun maker reportedly is hiring more than 200 people at the factory, which saw layoffs last year.

(AP | Mike Groll, 2013)

Ilion, N.Y. — Remington Arms is reportedly bringing more than 200 jobs back to its gun manufacturing plant in this Herkimer County village.

WKTV in Utica reports that the company, the biggest arms maker in the nation, brought back 40 jobs two weeks ago and has now decided to hire 200 more people for the factory's second and third shifts.

Citing union sources, the station said the company is increasing employment at the factory because of changes in the market. Remington employs approximately 1,300 people in Illion, where it has been making guns for 199 years and is the village's largest employer.

The company laid off 125 people in November. Union officials blamed the layoffs on New York's adoption of the Safe Act, a law that bans the sale, though not the manufacture, of high-capacity, military-style guns like Remington's Bushmaster AR-15 rifle. The law was passed in response to the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster to kill 20 first-graders and six adults.

Remington announced in February last year that it would open a factory in Huntsville, Ala., that would employ 2,000 people and hinted its anger over the Safe Act was one of the reasons it decided not to build the plant in New York. (Another reason likely was the fact that the company received $66 million in incentives from state and local governments in Alabama.)

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