Welcome Ruger

Sturm & Ruger has relocated from Connecticut to "gun-friendly North Carolina." I can't speak for the whole state, but the West is definitely gun country. Even the hippies who moved up here in the 60s and 70s to smoke weed in the Blue Ridge Mountains generally have guns; they're old enough now that we'd occasionally get called out to help them with medical or other rescue issues, and invariably there was a revolver sitting out where they could get to it if they needed. 

When the police are an hour away, if you're lucky, you're the only hope you've got. 

North Carolina has a number of legal restraints on firearm usage compared to many Red states, though. For example: if you are the aggressor in an encounter, you can't claim self-defense until and unless you can show that you attempted to retreat from the fight and were stopped or pursued; there's no 'citizens arrest' option like there was in Georgia. I would say it's at best the third-most gun-friendly state I've lived in, after Georgia and Virginia (at that time: obviously not now!).

Still, Ruger has probably made a wise move. They're my favorite handgun manufacturer; of the handguns I own, the clear majority are Rugers. When I shoot those poker cards, I'm usually shooting a Ruger Single Six -- the fixed-sight cowboy version. When I'm not shooting poker cards, I keep it loaded with snake shot in case of a close encounter with our Timber rattlers. They've bitten my wife and my dog since we moved up here, and they don't rattle any more like the earlier generations. The ones who rattled got shot, I guess: evolution in action. Now, the Timber rattlers just try to kill you straight off. 

UPDATE: The article is off on one point, I notice: we do have permitless OPEN carry in North Carolina. We don't have permitless CONCEALED carry. There are the usual restrictions about carrying to schools, etc. The legislature has approved full-scale Constitutional carry, but the governor vetoed it and the Senate has yet to act on the veto override (most likely because, like establishment Republicans generally, they prefer to fail to change things the way their voters want, they just like to fundraise off of the issues they don't fix).