Rock Island Armory is a hunting and archery brand that makes its products in Cedar City, Utah.
Rock Island Armory gives half of what it earns selling scrap from its Cedar City plant to the town, for food banks and community programs. The 20,000 square foot plant has built firearms since April 2022, the family's first gun factory in the United States.
The family business traces back to Squires, Bingham & Co., established in 1905 in the Philippines, which traded clothing as well as firearms. Don Celso Tuason bought it in 1941, and in 1952 he obtained the country's first license to manufacture firearms. The Rock Island Armory name came from an Illinois company, founded in 1977, that Armscor bought in 1985. The Tuason family still owns it.
Cedar City does the machining and the finishing for the RIA-USA line, including TAC Ultra 1911s and the 5.0E pistol. Its CNC machines run around the clock, some with nobody standing at them, and every new hire is trained on four jobs in the first year.
Most Rock Island guns still come from the family's main plant in Marikina, in the Philippines. The pistols from Cedar City sit at the top of the catalog, and anyone who wants to watch one get made can take the Friday factory tour.
The first Rock Island Armory, founded in Colona, Illinois, in 1977, took its name from the U.S. Army's nearby Rock Island Arsenal.
