A rare victory for common sense:
Bowing to Pentagon concerns and an international outcry, a Michigan arms company said Thursday that it would immediately stop embossing references to New Testament scriptures on rifle sights it sells the military.
The company, Trijicon Inc., has multimillion-dollar contracts with the Pentagon for advanced telescopic sights that are widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trijicon also said it would provide the Pentagon with 100 free kits to use for removing the lettering on existing weapons.
The Army and Marines are setting about removing the references immediately, which I imagine involves filing down the metal and re-bluing it. The bad news?
Neither the company nor the Pentagon released estimates of how many weapons carried the references, but the number appeared likely to be at least in the tens of thousands. The Marine Corps has an ongoing $660 million contract with Trijicon for more than 200,000 of the high-tech rifle sights, said Capt. Geraldine Carey, a Marine spokeswoman.
Which means it will be years, or perhaps never, before all the inscriptions are removed.
The company should underwrite the costs of removing the offending inscriptions. Contracts should be voided, and any shipments from them going forward should be require deep discounts.
Posted by: Riggsveda | January 23, 2010 at 02:50 PM