...the truth is that guns are rarely used to stop crimes or kill criminals...private citizens use guns to harm themselves or others far more often th… - Josh Sugarmann

The Freedom Group, a “family” of gun companies cobbled together by Cerberus Capital Management (the former owners of Chrysler, among many other things), has just filed new documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in anticipation of a long-threatened stock IPO (Initial Public Offering). And the picture isn’t pretty.
Freedom Group companies run the gamut from sporting arms to assault weapons. In addition to Bushmaster and DPMS (two leading manufacturers of AR-15 type assault rifles), companies and brands that comprise Freedom Group include: Remington, Marlin, Harrington & Richardson, New England Firearms, L.C. Smith, Dakota Arms, Advanced Armament Corporation, and Barnes Bullets. Freedom Group states that it has the number one U.S. market position in shotguns (31 percent), ammunition (33 percent), traditional rifles (37 percent), and “modern sporting rifles” (48 percent).

While the National Rifle Association promotes Mr. Heston as a kinder, gentler face to soften its hard-core image, he is as extreme as the rest of the group's leadership. A Heston speech last December before the ultraconservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington was so hateful that David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, praised it and circulated it on his Web site.
In his remarks, Mr. Heston repeatedly invoked "cultural 'warfare, spoke warmly of "white pride" and attacked "blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other." He also compared criticism of gun owners and the N.R.A. to the Nazi oppression of European Jews.
Whether Mr. Heston does the talking or not, the National Rifle Association remains the same extremist organization that blocks sensible gun laws and markets guns to children.

A gun-control movement worthy of the name would insist that President Clinton move beyond his proposals for controls -- such as expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines -- and immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island. Their measure would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.
Real gun control will take courage. In the long run, half-measures and compromises only sacrifice lives.