Heres an article from a link on that sight. I find it quite humorous as their main "witness" shows himself to be hypocrytical just in the article!
Demand drives sale of assault-style weapons#65532;
By Mary Beth Schneider
mary.beth.schneider@indystar.com August 19, 2004
Don Davis has been telling TV audiences for years how he loves to sell guns -- but even he thinks the semiautomatic rifle used to kill an Indianapolis officer Wednesday and wound four others should be outlawed.
"They're terrible," said Davis, owner of Don's Guns, 3807 Lafayette Road.
And, he added, "I sell them like crazy."
In 1993, Davis said he would stop selling the weapons, which have military features allowing rapid, accurate firing. He burned 44 AK-47s in a pit to make his point.
Four years later, he began selling them again. He said politicians bowed to pressure from groups like the National Rifle Association to keep the weapons legal.
He said there was just too much demand for the AK-47, which sells for about $300 and the cheaper $150 knockoff, the SKS -- both of which are imported.
Police say an SKS was used to kill Patrolman Timothy "Jake" Laird early Wednesday.
"They're all legal, and we sell them every day to 18-year-olds," Davis said. "Isn't that terrible?"
Davis said they aren't used for hunting.
But they are used in crimes -- including the slayings of law-enforcement officers.
A study by the Violence Policy Center, a national nonprofit educational foundation based in Washington, found 41 officers, including three in Indiana, were killed in the line of duty from 1998 through 2001 with assault-style weapons such as the AK-47 and SKS.
Wendy Osborne, an FBI special agent for the Indianapolis office, said rifles were used to kill 10 of the 52 officers slain nationwide in 2003 and five of the 32 officers slain this year as of July 31.
Statistics on how often the semiautomatic rifles are used in crimes couldn't be obtained from the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
But Mike Vergon, acting resident agent in charge of the Indianapolis ATF field office, said they are frequently used in crimes.
The assault-style weapons are banned in Gary and East Chicago. State Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, said he sponsored the ordinance in the 1980s that outlawed them in Gary and has been trying for 12 years to persuade the Indiana General Assembly to follow that lead.
He doubts this latest shooting alone will change minds.
"The NRA and the gun proponents are a strong force," he said. "Unfortunately, it will take these tragic events, and maybe somebody shooting in the Statehouse, to make people understand we don't need to make these types of weapons available."
State Sen. Bob Meeks, R-LaGrange, served 25 years as an Indiana State Police trooper, retiring in 1981.
In his first reaction to the news of the shootings, he said he thought the AK-47 already was illegal in Indiana.
"It ought to be illegal," he said, referring to any assault-style weapon that can pierce an officer's bullet-proof vest. "I don't see any good reason to have one of them."
But Meeks said lawmakers shouldn't overreact by rushing laws onto the books.
He's a gun advocate who owns an M-1 rifle. Last session, he co-sponsored a bill, passed overwhelmingly and signed into law by Gov. Joe Kernan, to protect gun owners from being sued if their weapons are stolen and used in a crime.
Davis, for one, doesn't think Laird's killing will spur lawmakers to ban the weapons.
"Nah," he said. "They'll talk about it a couple of days. The next day they'll be talking about something else."
