Imagine you had a company that built a particular product. What you make and sell is perfectly legal, but it’s not politically popular in many places. Now imagine that your home state, the state your company had been in for decades and in which you pay taxes and employ people who also pay taxes, decided that you could no longer sell your products to people in your state.

You’d probably move, right?

Well, that’s what gun companies have been dealing with for years now. Yet many of soldiered on, making products they couldn’t lawfully sell to their own employees because of state regulations.

Some will continue to do so, but a number have left.

The gun industry is warning liberal states that pushing for anti-gun policies and taxes will speed an already active escape by weapons makers to friendlier states such as South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry lobbying and information group, is encouraging its members to look at the trend away from anti-gun states including New York and Maryland.

At its upcoming SHOT Show, the biggest of its kind, NSSF plans to host supportive governors to let them talk up why gun companies should move.

So far, at least 17 gun firms have moved over the past few years, according to a new list compiled by NSSF. Moves often take jobs and hurt local economies.

These will not be the last 17 gun companies to relocate to friendlier environments.

So far, none of these companies have been big enough to put an economic hurt on the states they’re leaving, unfortunately, which means these relocations aren’t likely to be more than a blip on the states’ radars. However, it’s still important that they’re doing so.

After all, sooner or later these states will try to regulate what can be made in those factories, thus creating a bigger problem. By relocating to states where that’s not likely to happen, they skirt the issue entirely.

Especially since I suspect any legislation that tried to enact such regulations would also likely include penalties for any company that tried to leave the state.

Yes, that’s a thing, believe it or not.

Anyway, with 17 gun companies relocating, it definitely confirms this is a trend. It’s also one I expect to see continue as anti-gun states continue their insane push to regulate firearms while collecting taxes from the very companies they vilify. It’s downright disgusting, truth be told.

But this is what they want, so they’re getting it good and hard.

In time, it’ll be amusing to see a state look around and wonder why their economy isn’t growing as it used to, only to realize one of the fast-growing industries has essentially shunned manufacturing in their state because of their inane policies.

See, gun companies aren’t huge. They’re not Amazon or Walmart or Ford. Losing one doesn’t really register.

But for some states, losing all of them may well be an entirely different matter. It might just well put them in a position of needing to wake the hell up.

I just don’t see many of those states doing so.