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By Jake Tapper

Aug. 11, 1999 | WASHINGTON -- Good timing. Just three weeks ago, the manufacturer of the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle found in the van of accused killer Buford Furrow resigned suddenly and unexpectedly as presidential candidate George W. Bush's chief Maine fund-raiser.

Richard E. Dyke, the 65-year-old owner of Bushmaster Firearms in Windham, Maine, had given the Texas governor the maximum individual contribution allowed by law, $1,000, and had raised tens of thousands more for his campaign. And more was to come.

That was the plan, anyway, until July 21, when a reporter called the Bush 2000 campaign to ask about Dyke's role in Bush's road to the White House. Within a day, Dyke had resigned from the campaign. "I just don't want to be any baggage," Dyke told the Associated Press. "Young Bush doesn't have to justify why I was trying to help him."

Bushmaster Firearms, currently in its 20th year, manufactures automatic rifles not unlike military M-16s. Bushmaster promotional materials brag that the company is "producing the highest quality, most accurate AR15/M16 type firearms sold today -- by a long shot!" Bushmaster sells guns modified slightly so as to comply with the letter -- if not the spirit -- of the 1994 assault weapons ban.

And as the ban only outlawed the manufacture and importation of certain assault weapons, and not the sale of such guns already manufactured, Bushmaster continues to sell banned weapons, like the one found in Furrow's van. Its catalog refers to the assault weapons ban as "infamous."

Bushmaster Firearms was sued by Los Angeles police officer Martin Whitfield after he and several other officers were injured in a 1997 bank robbery shootout in which the LAPD was seriously outgunned by robbers packing assault weapons.

Neither Dyke nor the Bush campaign returned calls for comment.

Next page | "Bush has done the NRA's bidding in Texas"