To Aynor and Jamieson Woodard, welcome to bitter clinger country.
Welder Jamieson Woodard leaned against a table a good way beyond the semi-circle of television cameras Monday as S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley got her commemorative, semiautomatic rifle from PTR Industries.
Woodard is part of the contingent of employees who transferred to Horry County when PTR left Connecticut because of restrictive gun laws passed by the state legislature.
The law, written in reaction to the killing of elementary school children and teachers in Newton, Conn., bans the sale of the guns PTR makes.
“Not only did it put us out of work,” Woodard said of the law, “it was the little guys that really got hurt.”
During the ceremony Woodard watched, Haley said she promised PTR that South Carolina would never politicize gun ownership, and those are the kind of words that have helped the company and its employees feel they’ve been received with open arms.
“People here are a lot friendlier than they are up North,” Woodard said.
Woodard has lived in Horry County for six months, and during that time, PTR has hired 26 locals to help the 24 transferees make weapons like the one presented to Haley, Horry County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus said during the ceremony.