Costa Mesa gun gear company leaves for Reno, citing California’s strict laws
Citing California’s stringent gun regulations and high cost of living, owners of a shotgun accessory and gear company have moved their operation from Costa Mesa to Nevada.
Mesa Tactical finished vacating its Mesa del Mar office July 15.
In a phone interview this week from the new headquarters in Reno, Chief Executive Mitch Barrie said moving to the “Biggest Little City in the World” was the right decision for the small company.
As calls for tighter gun control have intensified with recent mass shootings in Orlando, Fla., and Dallas, Mesa Tactical is looking for lighter restrictions than those already in California.
“California has the most difficult, oppressive gun control,” Barrie said. “We’ve been living with that for a long, long time. Certainly it’s been difficult.”
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Gun owners in California, he said, “have to jump through all kinds of hoops ... and frankly, we don’t think it helps anything.”
As an example, Barrie noted a shotgun accessory that Mesa Tactical sells. It isn’t illegal to have the shotgun or the accessory separately, but when the piece is attached to the gun, it’s illegal.
Thus, to show customers how the accessory looks on the gun, Mesa Tactical had to send both to Oregon, where they could be photographed together.
“I think that’s preposterous that we have to do that kind of thing,” Barrie said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes these laws a little bit weird.”
Barrie and Lucy Espinoza, Mesa Tactical’s chief operating officer and general manager, said the company wants to expand its offerings to rifle accessories and that doing so would be too difficult in California.
Nevertheless, they said, Mesa Tactical will continue using many Orange County-based companies that help manufacture its gear and accessories.
Mesa Tactical started in 2003 in Costa Mesa, which, as the company proudly notes, was once the location of Armalite, developer of the M16 rifle.
Gradually, Mesa Tactical got bigger and moved to different locations before ending up in a roughly 10,000-square-foot space at 1135 Baker St.
At its peak, Mesa Tactical had about 15 employees; now it has about half of that who made the move to Reno. The company is looking to expand that figure.
Espinoza said Mesa Tactical’s new space, near the Truckee River about a mile east of the Reno Arch, is about the same size as the location in Costa Mesa.
She called the move “bittersweet, but it’s one of those things that’s for the better of the company.”
Reno has less traffic than Orange County and is more affordable, Espinoza said.
“There are a lot of positive things to look forward to,” she added. “It’s just like anything. We’ll get adjusted to the new town.”
Barrie said he has spoken with members of the gun manufacturing community in Nevada, some of whom also left the Golden State for the Silver State.
California lawmakers, Barrie said, are “driving those businesses out of the state.”
“And I don’t think they’re crying about it,” he added. “I think we’ll probably be seeing more.”
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Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com
Twitter: @BradleyZint
