Groups set sights on gun-control laws
By FRANZISKA CASTILLO
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 8, 2004)
Using a gun like a Bushmaster XM15-E2S A3 rifle, competitive sharpshooters like Yonkers gun enthusiast Anthony Costantini can accurately bore a bullet hole into the black bull's-eye of a target four football fields away.
For those who shoot for sport, Costantini said outside a gun show in Mount Kisco yesterday, a ban on the hobby's tools military-style guns often called assault weapons seems nonsensical. The only damage his shots cause, after all, is to the paper and cardboard of a shooting range's distant targets.
"Some people collect stamps. I target shoot," said Costantini, 33. "That's a legitimate hobby. What's wrong with that?"
A few miles from the gun show held by Big Al's Silver Bullet Productions at the Mount Kisco Holiday Inn, gun-control advocates took a far less benign view of assault rifles.
All too often, the guns are used to shoot humans, not inanimate targets, speakers from several gun-control and child-advocacy groups said at a news conference at Village Hall yesterday.
A Bushmaster XM15, they pointed out, was used by Washington D.C.-area snipers John Muhammad and Lee Malvo to kill 10 people and wound three others during a three-week shooting spree in 2002. Other similar guns, like the MAC-11 and the SKS 7.62mm rifle, were the weapons of choice in the killing of at least 41 police officers between 1998 and 2001, according to a review of FBI statistics by the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based nonprofit firearms research organization.
"The potential risk of these weapons, which were designed for war, far outweighs their benefit to society," said Andy Pelosi, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
Pelosi and other advocates yesterday called for background checks even for those who buy used guns, and asked federal lawmakers to enact tougher laws banning the sale of all semi-automatic assault weapons.
"There is no legitimate purpose for these weapons in civilian society," said Edie Smith, the New York state council president of the Million Mom March. "They are not needed for hunting, they are not needed for protection. They are useful for drive-by shootings and workplace massacres."
The 1994 Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, set to expire in September, outlawed assault rifles with certain features, including attached grenade launchers and bayonet mounts. But through what Pelosi called "deadly loopholes," rifle manufacturers were able to continue making very similar "post-ban" guns by removing those features and changing the guns' names. The new, still legal assault rifles, Pelosi said, were being sold yesterday at Big Al's gun show.
Gun show staff yesterday would not allow a reporter into the crowded exhibition, which appeared to be packed almost exclusively with young and middle-aged men. Outside the show's gates, Scott Sommavilla, president of the Westchester Firearm Association, said a stricter assault weapons ban was unnecessary. He emphasized the firearms' use in competitive target shooting and hunting.
Gun-control advocates, Sommavilla said, should lay the blame on criminals, not on rifles. "You can't legislate morality," he said.
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