To hear a certain over-caffeinated and hyperbole-prone shooting web site tell it, Remington’s decision to move various brands under one roof at their new Huntsville, Alabama facility was a blood-drenched Nazi massacre.

I’m taking a more pragmatic view of things, and I’m not ready to see the end of the world in the statement from Remington Spokesman Teddy Novin:

“This was a strategic business decision to concentrate our resources into fewer locations and improve manufacturing efficiency and quality. We are working hard to retain as many people from the affected facilities as possible.”

The following brands and product lines seem destined for Huntsville:

• Advanced Armament Corp, currently in Lawrenceville, Georgia
• Bushmaster Ar-15 production line currently in Ilion, NY
• DPMS, currently in St. Cloud, Minnesota
• LAR Manufacturing, currently in West Jordan, Utah
• Montana Rifleman, currently in Kalispell, Montana
• Para-Ordnance, currently in Pineville, North Carolina
• R1 1911 pistol production line currently in Ilion, NY
• TAPCO currently in Kennesaw, Georgia

Others are reading the tea leaves and seeing this move as a payback for Andrew Cuomo’s NY SAFE Act or Chuck Schumer’s duplicity or Minnesota’s flirtation with an assault weapons ban… which is indeed possible, though I doubt it is a primary driver of a corporate decision that moves jobs from gun-friendly states as well.

Other Freedom Group brands Barnes Bullets, Dakota Arms, Harrington & Richardson, Marlin, Mountian Khakis, Parker Gunmakers, and other Remington sites don’t appear to be part of the consolidation process.

Purely as a business move, it makes sense to consolidate production into centralized new, state-of-the-art facilities instead of continuing to keep up with the logistics tangle and the physical maintenance of aging facilities scattered around the country. Centralizing production can lead to more even training, more consistent processes, better efficiency, better quality, and in general, more profitability.