A self-respecting mythomaniac and cinephile, and also of a certain age, when he hears the name Remington, he notices the innocent nostalgia of childhood and that black and white Hollywood of western films, which sometimes, they were from the far west, the old west, or the wild west.
Remington rifles and revolvers (like Winchesters) evoke such gems as The Stagecoach, The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance, Alone in the Face of Danger, Land of the Bold, The Outsider, and Passion for the Strong. What extraordinary afternoons in a double session.
That time has already passed, like the age of innocence. Contemporary cinema entered other paths of glory and the wild west in the United States passed from the screens and became a reality in any of the cardinal points of this country.
In December 2012, the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newton (Connecticut), one of the most shocking, caused 28 deaths; 20 were children between six and seven years old. The author, Adam Lanza, used a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle manufactured by Remington.
In an unprecedented case, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead in 2019 so that this legendary arms manufacturing company could go to trial, accused of being responsible for this tragedy. In 2022, he reached an out-of-court settlement with nine of the families, which earned him a payment of $73 million, to close the case.
That lawsuit and the suspension of payments declaration are two of the factors that have influenced America’s oldest gun manufacturing company to close the original plant in Ilion, in the Mohawk Valley enclave of New York state. where the company was founded before this place was even a township, and where Eliphalet Remington forged the first rifle barrel more than 200 years ago in 1816. Eliphalet declined to name this settlement (the origin dates from 1725) and was christened Ilion in 1852.
The workforce went from 1,300 workers a decade ago to just over 300 today.
The main reason for the impending move in March, however, is due to the high cost of their historic factory. The current owner of Remington Firearms (RemArms), blamed the decision on “production deficiencies” in the letter he sent to union leaders. In this writing he alluded to the knock on the door to the high cost of maintaining and securing a space of around 92,903 square meters in multiple spaces, some of which were built at the time of the First World War.
Remington is consolidating operations at the Georgia plant, a state the company says is much friendlier to the firearms industry.
But the relief that those opposed to the arms-free bar can experience, to the point of causing so much mortality, contrasts with the feeling of emptiness expressed by the residents of Ilion, whose motto is “Where tradition is preserved, while achieving progress”. The city of 7,600, 358 kilometers north of Manhattan, faces the prospect of a huge loss of revenue and an empty factory that has defined the existence and character of this locality, like the car in Detroit and computers in Silicon Valley. The four-storey central barracks, a brick building at the junction of Armory Street and Remington Avenue, has always been the great reference for residents.
The residents have not seen the destructive power of what is manufactured in the municipality, but quite the opposite: a source of life. Tragedies happened elsewhere.
Everyone in this town knows someone who works or has worked in these facilities. Jobs in this factory have been practically a birthright. Occupations passed from grandparents to parents and children. “When the company goes away, it won’t be like a factory going away,” Jim Conover, who started at Remington in packaging in 1964 and retired 40 years later as a manager, told the AP. “It will be – he added – as if part of your family moved.”
Everyone explains the film in their own way and the black and white can be colored.
