Colt Factory gets National Park Status

[PegLeg45]

After a ten year process, the old Colt's facility will be made a National Park.


Quite the irony for such an anti-gun state gubmint.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/connecticut-colt-gun-factory-national-park-064147330--finance.html


FTA:

As a decade-long push to make a national park out of Samuel Colt's 19th-century gun factory won approval, elected officials hailed the project as a way to boost one of Hartford's poorest neighborhoods and honor the revolver as a marvel of manufacturing. Notably absent from the celebrating was Colt's Manufacturing Co., as it and other gun makers say a strict gun control law has left them feeling unwelcome in the state.

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While New England politics have not been seen as friendly to guns for years, the relationship between gun makers and leaders who championed gun control became bitter after Connecticut adopted one of the country's toughest gun control laws following the 2012 Newtown elementary school shooting. A gun industry association withdrew its support for the park project, and Colt executives, who closed the factory in West Hartford one day last year so workers could protest the gun legislation, have declined to discuss it.

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Colt and the company's president, Dennis Veilleux, declined several requests to comment on whether it might become involved in the park's development. Veilleux warned last year that the gun law was likely to erode Connecticut ties the company had built up over its 175 years because customers would not want to support the state.

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The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a Newtown-based gun industry association, withdrew support for the Coltsville legislation last year, saying the campaign reflected hypocrisy by the state's congressional delegation and governor. The group's senior vice president, Lawrence Keane, said last week he did not expect it would be involved at all with the project.

"We think it's more important to focus on good-paying manufacturing jobs rather than creating part-time jobs for ticket-takers at a park," Keane said.

While the gun industry has been at odds with Connecticut officials, advocates of tighter gun control say they recognize Colt's historical significance and take no issue with devoting resources to the park project. Whether or not Colt takes a role in the project's development, Larson, who first began pursuing the idea 14 years ago, said he is sure it is a point of pride for the company.