Area gun stores resume selling assault rifles after federal ban ends at midnight
Norcross gun store owner Phil Thompson has orders lined up for high-powered assault weapons that once again can be sold legally after midnight.
Beginning Tuesday, Thompson's Gun Shop and hundreds of other weapons dealers across Georgia and the nation can begin delivering on orders for AK-47s, TEC-9s, Uzis and similar weapons banned from shelves for 10 years.
"Everybody is saying this is crazy," Thompson said of the ban's expiration. But he, like many others who opposed the ban, said the prohibition did more harm than good.
"We didn't get here by becoming unarmed and scared," he said. "If we hadn't had guns in 1776, we'd still be bowing to the queen."
Law enforcement officials are bracing for more crime connected to the controversial weapons. The guns can fire dozens of bullets in seconds using magazines that hold more than 100 rounds.
"Young people are being killed on our streets," Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington said. "A lot are being killed by assault weapons. The ban limited their ability to get them. Once the flood gates open . ."
Pennington, along with other police chiefs and sheriffs, pushed last week in Washington for an extension of the ban. "We're sick and tired of picking up young bodies off our streets," he said.
While polls show most Americans support extending the ban, enacted under President Bill Clinton, Congress has declined to do so. President Bush has refused to push lawmakers to take up the issue but says he supports the restrictions.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that 71 percent of the public supported extending the ban, and 64 percent of the almost 29,000 gun owners polled said they favored the ban.
At a gun show Sunday at North Atlanta Trade Center in Gwinnett County, there was disagreement over the ban.
Mike Carroll, 43, of Gwinnett said he considered the legislation flawed.
"If you own an assault weapon and you intend to use it for illegal purposes, [the ban] didn't prevent that," he said. ". . . It was worthless."
He said people who wanted assault weapons were able to get them despite the ban. "The way you get any stricter is you outlaw guns," he said.
Irvin Gunter, 59, of Berkeley Lake thinks the ban ought to remain. "The common person does not need assault weapons," he said.
Gunter said he used to hunt as a kid and has always liked guns. But he said assault weapons' superior firepower puts police officers at a disadvantage.
"I think there ought to be a longer waiting period to buy guns and stiffer penalties if you commit a crime with a gun," he said.
Gun store owner Thompson said the ban hadn't "deterred anything. They [criminals] are going to get their stuff [guns] if they have to steal it or get it illegally."
And not all law enforce- ment officials favored the ban.
"I stand with the Second Amendment where a man had a right to own a weapon of their choice," said police Chief Bert Runtland of Lake Park, a Georgia town of 6,000 at the Florida line.
"We just need to enforce the laws better," he said. "I have a cannon in my front yard. Are they going to take that away too?"
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