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Protest targets rising gun sales
©Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Gun sales are up since Sept. 11, and some manufacturers are pitching models by alluding to the terrorist attacks. Gun control advocates accuse the firearms industry of trying to profit from tragedy. Nan Aron, president of the Washington-based Alliance for Justice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., held a news conference Thursday to draw attention to gunmakers' marketing efforts. The Ithaca Gun Co. is selling a line of "Homeland Security" pump-action shotguns "in our current time of national need," according to the company's Web site. Another Web link Aron and Waxman displayed came from Tromix Corp., which is advertising a .50-caliber "Turban Chaser" rifle on its site. The gunmaker Beretta is offering a "United We Stand" 9mm pistol, similar to the sidearm U.S. soldiers have carried since 1985. A limited edition sold out in a day, spokesman Jeff Leh said. The Italian gunmaker, which has its American headquarters in Accokeek, Md., donated $100,000 to relatives of the victims of the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon from sales of the limited edition. It is sending another $50 for each additional United We Stand gun it sells. Leh said the company's marketing link to the terror attacks is based on its customers' patriotism and the jump in demand. Gun control groups "seem to be ignoring the fact that the right of self-defense is the very right that this country is exercising right now," Leh said. Aron criticized the link between gun sales and donations. "We shouldn't seek to help the victims of one senseless tragedy by increasing the likelihood of more senseless tragedies," Aron said. Gunmakers, dealers and FBI statistics all indicate that more Americans have been buying guns since the attacks. Attendance is up at National Rifle Association gun safety classes, NRA spokeswoman Trish Gregory said. The alliance has put up 135 billboards in the Los Angeles area warning about the dangers of guns in the home, partly to respond to the 300 billboards the California Rifle and Pistol Association put up in October. A "pop quiz" on the alliance billboards asserts that guns bought for self-defense lead to more domestic violence, suicides and accidental shootings. "This campaign is a direct reaction to the gun industry's effort to boost gun sales in the wake of Sept. 11," Aron said. The California gun group's billboards carried the message, "Society is safer when criminals don't know who's armed." The campaign was conceived and paid for before Sept. 11, said Chuck Michel, the association's spokesman. But the message was even more relevant after the attacks, Michel said. "I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about making people think about one of the tools that's available to . . . respond to certain threats -- threats that were every bit as real before Sept. 11, but threats people are much more aware of since Sept. 11," he said.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
