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"With the federal ban on assault weapons set to expire Monday, gun manufacturers are marketing military-style firearms and are ready to sell them as soon as Sept. 14, a consumer group said Tuesday. "The gun industry is champing at the bit for the ban to expire," said Susan Peschin, firearms project director at the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit association of 300 consumer groups that released the study.

The consumer group interviewed gun-industry experts and marketing representatives and surveyed manufacturers' catalogs and Web sites. For example, ArmaLite Inc., a gun manufacturer in Geneseo, Ill., is advertising a "Post-PostBan Rifle Program," offering consumers attachments to convert their firearms to their pre-ban configuration, with shipping available Sept. 14. The company is offering a nonrefundable prepayment option to those who wish to get a jump-start. "The program offers customers a way to avoid the risk of delay, yet also have the benefits of a change in law," the company says on its Web site.

The 1994 law, signed by President Bill Clinton, banned 19 types of assault weapons but included a "sunset" clause that said it would expire in 10 years if Congress did not renew it. President Bush has said he supports the ban, but a number of attempts to extend it in Congress have failed.

The Consumer Federation of America predicted that manufacturers will introduce new models of popular weapons banned under the 1994 law, such as AK-47s, TEC-9s and Uzis. Manufacturers will also be able to circumvent a ban on the import of "nonsporting" assault weapons by combining foreign-made components with U.S.-made parts, the study said. It said it also expects more U.S. gun companies will stockpile imported firearms in "custom bonded warehouses" in the United States to be reconfigured into legal weapons".

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Ho hum: "Gun manufacturers are gearing up for the scheduled expiration next week of a 10-year-old federal ban on assault weapons and are taking orders for semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines that may soon become legal again, according to a report released yesterday. The report by the Consumer Federation of America, which favors greater regulation of the gun industry, concludes that "assault weapons will be more lethal and less expensive" without the ban and argues that police "may be forced to adopt a more militaristic approach" as greater numbers of firearms flood the market."




High school locked down. Airgun found: "League City [TX] police officers and Galveston County Sheriff's deputies sealed off Clear Creek High School after a student reported he saw another student with a handgun. Nervous students were kept in classrooms while authorities searched for the weapon, but that did not keep teens from calling their parents. ... Clear Creek ISD spokesperson Karen Permetti said, 'There was a BB gun, an air type BB gun, that was found in a locker. It looked like a handgun, but it was a BB gun.' ... Like all school districts across the country, Clear Creek ISD has very strict rules when it comes to weapons in the school. A BB gun qualifies as a firearm."