The rifle believed used in the recent slayings of three Birmingham police officers would be illegal under a bill now before Congress, a move supported by some of Alabama's top law officers in the wake of the deaths. "It's a military weapon all day long,'' Montgomery police Chief John Wilson said Monday of the SKS, a semiautomatic rifle whose rounds can penetrate the protective vests worn by most police officers. "That's all it is, and it needs to be used for nothing more than that.''
But while Wilson and Mobile police Chief John Cochran said the SKS and similar semiautomatic rifles should not be available to the general public, Alabama's U.S. senators and others in the congressional delegation historically have opposed gun-control measures.
Gun-control advocates say the SKS, a Soviet-made rifle that preceded the AK-47, is the semiautomatic rifle most often used against police officers. Authorities in Birmingham have said it was used in the June 17 killings of officers Robert "Bob'' Bennett, Harley Chisholm III and Carlos Owen. The three officers were wearing protective vests when they were shot while trying to arrest a man on a misdemeanor assault warrant. Two men, 27-year-old Nathaniel Woods and 24-year-old Kerry Marquise Spencer, are charged with capital murder in the officers' deaths. The SKS and the Bushmaster rifle - a cousin of the U.S. Army's M-16 used in the January deaths of two Athens officers in north Alabama, both are readily available at gun stores throughout Alabama because they are not among the "assault weapons'' banned by Congress in 1994. That could change soon. A federal bill that would make permanent the ban, which ends later this year, also would broaden the definition of "assault weapon'' to include the SKS, Bushmaster and similar models. A comparable law already is in place in California, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center. "The beauty of this approach is that we know it's working in California and the manufacturers haven't found a way around it,'' Rand said. It's unclear, though, whether the measure will pass. The Senate in March narrowly approved a 10-year extension of the ban without the broader weapon definition, and Alabama Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby both voted against that bill. The two Republicans were traveling Monday and unavailable for comment, but press officers for each noted their opposition to gun-control measures in the past. A spokesman for Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, said the congressman opposed the permanent ban but was unavailable for further comment. Even with a ban, it could prove difficult to eliminate the rifles. Jim Cavanaugh, regional director for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said there are "millions of them in circulation,'' owing to the SKS' popularity as a lightweight, easily concealable weapon that's relatively inexpensive - around $200 or less. "It's not a bad rifle or a good rifle, it's just a rifle,'' Cavanaugh said. Wilson, the Montgomery police chief, wrote an opinion piece for Sunday's Montgomery Advertiser in which he said the weapons were ``easy to conceal, they shoot a multiple amount of rounds, they're easy to convert to full automatic - there are too many evils in those guns for the general public to be walking around with them.'' "They're very dangerous weapons, they're powerful weapons and they're not the weapon of choice for hunters or anything like that,'' said Cochran, the Mobile police chief. "They're simply powerful weapons for self-defense, but likewise can be used for killing. They're war weapons.'' "I think it's a fine rifle,'' Larry McCoy, a Mobile gun shop owner, told the Mobile Register for a Monday story about the SKS. "I think most people buy them to hunt with, but you can use them for self-protection.'' Wilson, however, said: "They are not good for hunting, and people can make that argument all they want to and it's wrong, because I used to own one. All they are are assault rifles.''