Dealers Push Assault Weapon Upgrades

The 60,000 people expected this weekend at the National Rifle Assn. convention will find that a cottage industry has sprung up since they last met.

Gun companies are offering to beef up firearms by adding high-tech accouterments and high-capacity ammunition clips -- accessories that were outlawed in certain combinations until Congress let the assault weapons ban expire in the fall.

Manufacturers and dealers, including some scheduled to be among the exhibitors on the floor of a Houston convention center this weekend, have launched marketing campaigns tied specifically to the end of the ban.

Sog Armory -- a Stafford, Texas, company that sells parts for AR-15 and M-16 rifles -- for $24.95 is offering what it calls “post-ban” devices designed to reduce recoil when a semiautomatic rifle is fired.

Other companies that will be at the convention are offering kits to spruce up weapons that enthusiasts felt had been stripped down by the ban. For about $185, they will outfit a rifle with devices such as a “flash suppressor.” The piece fits on a muzzle and is designed to keep a shooter from being blinded at night -- and, critics point out, to keep a shooter’s location unknown to the target.

The companies make no secret of the fact that they are capitalizing on the expiration of the ban.

“Now that the ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ has expired, upgrade your Ban configuration with these ArmaLite parts!” reads a current advertisement offered by ArmaLite Inc., a Geneseo, Ill., manufacturer of high-end rifles.

The company will be among 450 exhibitors this weekend. Its upgrade includes devices regulated from 1994 until Congress allowed the ban to expire.

For $87, the company offers collapsible stocks for M-15 and AR-10 rifles. Gun rights advocates say collapsing or telescoping stocks merely make it easier for people of small stature to handle a weapon; gun control advocates say the stocks are designed to allow people to hide weapons while transporting them.

ArmaLite also offers high-capacity magazines. The weapons ban capped the number of rounds that could be contained in an ammunition magazine at 10. Gun companies say the expiration of the law has been followed by high demand for larger magazines, though some states, including California, maintain their own restrictions.

“We instituted these changes based upon consumer demand,” said Randy Luth, owner and president of DPMS/Panther Arms, a St. Cloud, Minn., arms manufacturer.

Luth said DPMS began offering several rifle options after the ban ended, such as more pistol grips. Industry advocates say the grips are designed to improve a shooter’s control of a rifle; gun control advocates say they also allow a shooter to “spray fire” with one hand.

Critics of the gun industry say assault weapons are too powerful to allow civilians to own them. They say they can be deadly in the wrong hands, believe they helped fuel gang violence in recent years and say there is no reason that hunters need to carry such potent firearms.

But thousands are sold each year -- there are about 2 million circulating in the United States -- and they hold a special allure for some gun aficionados.

That’s partly because of their practical attributes. They are lightweight and increasingly accurate, which helps in shooting competitions. Because many are built to military standards, they are considered durable and able to withstand harsh weather conditions.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the public had no reason to be concerned with changes in the marketplace of weaponry, and he dismissed the devices as cosmetic.

“None of these affect the performance capability of a firearm,” he said. “They only affect the way the firearm looks.”

Other industry backers say that police, hunters and competition shooters are now carrying weapons that are more accurate, stealthy and nimble, and have more firepower, than any assembled legally in the United States for a decade. However, they agreed that the changes posed no threat.

Joseph Olson, a professor at the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., and the president of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, said the end of the ban has only proved what gun enthusiasts argued all along -- that arbitrary provisions made the law useless.

“A gun is a gun is a gun,” Olson said. “A gun is a machine for ejecting projectiles at high velocity. That’s all a gun does, whether it is a big gun or a medium-sized gun or a little gun. A human being has to aim it somewhere.”

But Brian Siebel, senior attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, said the end of the ban had produced “a love affair with lethality.”

“With the expiration of the ban and the limit on high-capacity magazines, the lid is off,” he said. “They are out there trying to make as many new products that will appeal to buyers as they can. The unfortunate thing is that criminals seek high firepower. And now they are able to get their hands on just about anything they want.”

The 1994 ban outlawed the manufacture and import of military-style weapons, such as Uzis and AK-47s, and the manufacture of high-capacity magazines.

The ban also outlawed the sale of guns with certain combinations of devices. For example, a rifle with a detachable magazine could not also be equipped with a telescoping stock and a flash suppressor, though the devices were not illegal by themselves.

Even the ban’s most ardent supporters conceded that it was a flawed law. It was riddled with loopholes that allowed a host of copycat weapons. Most assault weapons bought prior to the ban remained legal under a so-called grandfather clause.

High-capacity magazines produced before the ban could also be sold during the ban. Gun industry leaders say many manufacturers simply pumped up production of the magazines in anticipation of the ban, so the devices were widely available during its early years -- though the magazine provision was supposed to be one of the ban’s toughest pieces.

All the ban did, Olson said, was dry up the supply of high-capacity magazines, quadrupling their prices. Since the ban ended, prices have fallen to a quarter of what they were at their peak, he said.

After lobbying by the NRA, Congress declined to reinstate the law in September 2004, though the ban had widespread support among the public and the law enforcement community. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers wants to reinstitute the ban, but the NRA and industry leaders said they were prepared for the fight.

“The law was a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Luth said. “It was nothing but politics and it was driven by emotion.”

Gun control advocates and gun industry advocates disagree sharply on whether the ban had any effect on crime.

“This law produced no positive gain at all,” Olson said. “These firearms tend to bought up by people who are interested in expensive, quality firearms,” not criminals and gangs.

Siebel, however, released a study last year purporting to show that the rate in which assault weapons were used to commit crime fell during the ban.

The study indicated the weapons made up 4.8% of the guns the government traced to crime in the five years prior to the ban. By the time the ban ended, 1.6% of guns traced to crime were assault weapons.

Siebel said that the first phase of the industry’s response to the end of the ban -- retrofitting weapons that were stripped down over the last 10 years -- was complete. What he called phase two -- designing new weapons that would have been illegal under the ban -- was underway.

Law enforcement officers said that though it was too early to gauge the effect of the end of the ban, they were bracing for the next generation of guns.

“They are brutal weapons,” said Richmond, Calif., Police Sgt. Mark Gagan, a member of the NRA. “The number of bullets coming out, and their speed, is devastating. I don’t like that kind of firepower in the wrong hands.”

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Staff researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this report.