P.M. BRIEFING : Assault Rifle Applications Pile Up
Gun importers are prepared to bring close to 1 million more semiautomatic assault-style rifles into the United States should the Bush Administration decide not to make its import ban permanent.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms now has applications pending for 965,000 of the weapons, ATF spokesman Dick Pedersen said. “It appears there have been a lot more applications that came in after the ban,” he said.
The temporary suspension imposed March 14 covered about 400,000 weapons, including about 300,000 for which import permits had already been approved. An expansion of that suspension last week covered another 240,000 weapons.
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