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- <text id=89TT2241>
- <title>
- Aug. 28, 1989: American Notes:Firearms
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Aug. 28, 1989 World War II:50th Anniversary
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 15
- American Notes
- FIREARMS
- Bring Home A Friend
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Having served one's country abroad, each discharged soldier
- should have the right to bring home a submachine gun as "small
- recompense for the isolation, the boredom and the risk of
- overseas duty." So argues the National Rifle Association in a
- letter to drug czar William Bennett, who championed the ban on
- imported semiautomatic rifles. Bennett, the N.R.A. letter
- gratuitously points out, was neither isolated nor at risk during
- his draft-vulnerable years at the height of the Viet Nam War
- but instead was engaged in "scholarly pursuits" as a graduate
- student.
- </p>
- <p> Assistant N.R.A. counsel James Warner says he only meant to
- describe the life of a soldier to Bennett and explain why
- bringing back a semiautomatic weapon "bought in good faith" is
- so important to G.I.s. Is Bennett going to answer Warner's
- letter soon? No, says Bennett's office. Is he ever going to
- answer Warner's letter? "Basically, the answer is no."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-