thedrifter
08-19-09, 03:48 PM
August 18, 2009, 2:40 pm
Support Veterans’ Families. Buy an AK-47.*
By C.J. Chivers
You read that right. This week Arsenal Inc., an American manufacturer of Kalashnikov-style rifles, is beginning a promotion that will use proceeds from gun sales to try raising $250,000 to help families of American service members killed or wounded overseas.
For at least several weeks, for every Kalashnikov that Arsenal sells, the company pledges to donate $50 to New England Warrior, a small nonprofit organization based in Massachusetts. The organization, formed in honor of a group of Marines and a Navy corpsman killed in Iraq in 2006, raises money for the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, which awards scholarships to the children of Marines wounded or killed in action.
Make no mistake — raising money for veterans’ families off a rifle modeled on those used against American troops is designed to get your attention. The promotion taps into the potent and complicated symbolism of the AK-47, just as a Missouri car dealer did with his own Kalashnikov-based promotion last month. It’s also designed to sell guns.
To meet its goal, Arsenal must sell 5,000 firearms — a sales level that the company says is attainable.
“I’d be happy if we could do this in a month or two,” Walker English, the company’s sales director, said by telephone. “We’ve done those kinds of numbers before.”
Why is there an asterisk beside AK-47 in this post’s headline? Because these guns are not, in the technical sense, true AK-47s — although to a casual observer many of them look identical to weapons people routinely identify by that name. Appearances notwithstanding, Arsenal’s rifles are Americanized descendants of the AK-47, not the real item. To comply with federal law, almost all of Arsenal’s weapons fire only semiautomatically, which means that with each trigger pull they fire a single shot and reload mechanically. To fire another shot, the trigger must be pulled again. True Kalashnikov assault rifles, which cannot be legally sold to most buyers in the United States, can be fired automatically and will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held back (or until they are out of ammunition).
Arsenal, which owns a factory and assembly plant in Las Vegas, is an unusual firm, with business in both the domestic collector and international arms markets. It sells about 15 different knockoffs of the original Soviet rifle, in a range of configurations and calibers. To make its product line, the company legally imports new sporting versions of Kalashnikov rifles from arms plants in Bulgaria and Russia, then modifies them in its own factory. It also makes a few Kalashnikovs almost from scratch, with only the barrel coming from overseas. It does not conduct direct retail sales. One Kalashnikov, purchased from a dealer, can cost $900 to $4,000, Mr. English said.
Ellie
Support Veterans’ Families. Buy an AK-47.*
By C.J. Chivers
You read that right. This week Arsenal Inc., an American manufacturer of Kalashnikov-style rifles, is beginning a promotion that will use proceeds from gun sales to try raising $250,000 to help families of American service members killed or wounded overseas.
For at least several weeks, for every Kalashnikov that Arsenal sells, the company pledges to donate $50 to New England Warrior, a small nonprofit organization based in Massachusetts. The organization, formed in honor of a group of Marines and a Navy corpsman killed in Iraq in 2006, raises money for the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, which awards scholarships to the children of Marines wounded or killed in action.
Make no mistake — raising money for veterans’ families off a rifle modeled on those used against American troops is designed to get your attention. The promotion taps into the potent and complicated symbolism of the AK-47, just as a Missouri car dealer did with his own Kalashnikov-based promotion last month. It’s also designed to sell guns.
To meet its goal, Arsenal must sell 5,000 firearms — a sales level that the company says is attainable.
“I’d be happy if we could do this in a month or two,” Walker English, the company’s sales director, said by telephone. “We’ve done those kinds of numbers before.”
Why is there an asterisk beside AK-47 in this post’s headline? Because these guns are not, in the technical sense, true AK-47s — although to a casual observer many of them look identical to weapons people routinely identify by that name. Appearances notwithstanding, Arsenal’s rifles are Americanized descendants of the AK-47, not the real item. To comply with federal law, almost all of Arsenal’s weapons fire only semiautomatically, which means that with each trigger pull they fire a single shot and reload mechanically. To fire another shot, the trigger must be pulled again. True Kalashnikov assault rifles, which cannot be legally sold to most buyers in the United States, can be fired automatically and will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held back (or until they are out of ammunition).
Arsenal, which owns a factory and assembly plant in Las Vegas, is an unusual firm, with business in both the domestic collector and international arms markets. It sells about 15 different knockoffs of the original Soviet rifle, in a range of configurations and calibers. To make its product line, the company legally imports new sporting versions of Kalashnikov rifles from arms plants in Bulgaria and Russia, then modifies them in its own factory. It also makes a few Kalashnikovs almost from scratch, with only the barrel coming from overseas. It does not conduct direct retail sales. One Kalashnikov, purchased from a dealer, can cost $900 to $4,000, Mr. English said.
Ellie