Clinton's gun-control talk boosts sales, dealer says

One group of merchants thinks President Clinton is very good for business. "President Clinton is the best salesman I have ever had," Pete Cutelli said with a loud laugh.

"Every time Clinton starts talking about gun control, business goes up at gun shows," said Cutelli, who puts on the St. Louis Weapon Collectors Gun & Knife shows.Clinton's latest anti-gun remarks and the pending implementation of the "permanent" Brady gun control act on Nov. 30 have sent customers pouring into gun shops and shows.

The new gun law institutes a procedure called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The system works similarly to a credit-card approval system. If someone wants to buy a firearm, the gun dealer types the person's name, birthdate and sex into a computer and phones in the data to a central FBI computer. After checking the criminal records, NICS approves or disapproves within 30 seconds.

The law will supersede the current Brady Act, which requires a criminal background check and a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases. The instant check will do away with the five-day wait. But under the new law, buyers of rifles and shotguns must be checked, too. That provision has set off a gun-buying rush.

"Gun sales are way up. They have been since June for me . . . two or three times normal," said Chip Johnson, owner of Direct Firearms in Gower, Mo.

"This is happening all across the nation," said Richard Feldman, director of the American Shooting Sports Council in Atlanta.

"It's not a selling frenzy yet. That will come next month, in the last two weeks of November," Feld-man said.

"But in talking to distributors, a number of the big chains have stores which have sold out of their fall stocks of rifles and shotguns."