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Readers of The Oregonian have received an unusual Christmas offer from outdoor retailer Cabela's: the same type of military-style rifle used in this month's mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.
The advertising insert, placed last week in Oregonian print editions, features as its central item the Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport, a semiautomatic rifle.
"SAVE $150," promises the ad for the sporting-goods superstore, which opened a Tualatin location in 2014. The offer is good through today.
Alert WW reader Doug Menely spotted the ad in his home edition of the newspaper.
"I personally found this ad totally insensitive to what happened in Roseburg, Southern California and every place that has had mass shootings," Menely writes. "This weapon that is displayed is clearly not a hunting rifle."
Whether the M&P15 is a hunting rifle is a matter of some debate. But the gun was used by killers in two recent mass shootings.
The ad arrives less than a month after the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, where a married couple, allegedly dedicated to radical Islamic beliefs, used an M&P15 and other weapons to kill 14 people and wound 21 others.
A gunman used an M&P15 in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012.
The M&P15 is commonly described as a variant of the AR-15, which itself is effectively the civilian version of the military-grade M-16 rifle. Sales of these military-style "black guns" historically rise in the wake of mass shootings, amid fears of violence and alarm that the federal government might try to restrict sales of the weapons.
The M&P15 was banned in Connecticut in 2013 after the December 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
Calls to local Cabela's retailers were redirected to voice mail and the chain's communications office in Sydney, Neb. The company's spokesman has not returned a call from WW seeking comment.
Oregonian Media Group president Steve Moss has not returned WW's email asking about the adverting insert.
Willamette Week