'MAGA Patriot' rifle: US gunmaker sells customised gun model used to shoot Trump

A US gunmaker is selling customised models of the rifle used to shoot former President Donald Trump.

Alabama-based gunmaker PTC Armory is selling a gun named ‘MAGA Patriot’. It is named after the far-right ‘Make America Great Again’ movement of Republican presidential nominee Trump. It is based on the AR-15 rifle, which is the same weapon used to shoot Trump in the unsuccessful assassination attempt this year.

In July, a 20-year-old man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired at Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. One of the bullets grazed Trump’s ear. Moments after firing the first shots, Crooks was located by counter-snipers of the Secret Service and was killed.

Now, PTC Armory is selling a customised version of the same rifle in Trump’s name.

The first batch of the limited-edition rifles has 20 pieces at a cost $2,997 each, according to Financial Times.

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The newspaper reported that each of the rifle has ‘TRUMP’ emblazoned into one side of the weapon and ‘MAGA Patriot’ written on another.

The companies says on its website that the every rifle has been “tested and GUARANTEED to shoot ‘sniper rifle’ accurate (sic)”.

“The MAGA Patriot AR-15 was designed to be THE AR-15 you reach for in the gun safe when your life or the lives of your loves ones are at stake and you need a rifle you can trust,” said PTC Armory’s founder Caleb Lee, as per the newspaper.

The purchase of the rifle comes with two days free firearms training at Lee’s firing school named Patriot Training Center, according to the newspaper.

The gun violence in the United States, which claims dozens of lives every year, is a major issue. It has led to a polarised debate around gun safety measures with Democrats favouring increasing regulation of gun ownership and Republicans against it. Such debates were triggered again after Trump’s assassination attempt in July. Despite their own candidates being shot, the Republicans have continued to support guns.

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Now, the rifle that shot Trump is being sold in his name. The AR-15 is a type of rifle that is sold by several companies in several models. It is the also the model on which standard-issue rifles of the US military are made. While the military uses automatic version of the AR-15, civilians are sold the semi-automatic version. There are workarounds for that though. A device called a ‘bump stock’, which was ironically banned by the Trump administration but was allowed again by the Supreme Court, could turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic or a nearly-automatic weapon.