BENNINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Operating on the principle that “peace is patriotic,” Rob Sperber has been busy this summer making magnetized peace symbols for people to put on their vehicles.

Sperber, the owner of Sperber Tool Works, began making plastic peace symbol magnets by hand earlier this summer, cutting them individually with a knife.

“The tips of my fingers were numb for three weeks,” he said.

But demand for the eight-inch plastic magnets has soared since then. More than 3,000 have been made during the last two months, with a machine press now stamping them out, he said.

When Sperber heard that Cindy Sheehan, a California mother who lost her eldest son in Iraq last year, was holding a vigil at President Bush’s ranch, he sent a dozen of his magnets as a show of support. But giving away the product has been part of the whole idea from the beginning, he said.

“What we want to do is get this going so people would steal the idea and have one on every car,” he said. “People have told me I should copyright it, but how do you copyright the peace symbol?”

The point of it is to provoke discussion, Sperber said.

“Peace is patriotic,” he said. “The idea that I resist and reject is that if you’re not for the war you’re unpatriotic. I support the troops – I want them to come home alive.”

Not all the peace symbols are being given away. They sell for about $5 or $6, depending on whether they are one solid color or a patterned design. So far, his company is the only one making them, he said.

They are available from Sperber directly, and in several stores from North Adams, Mass., to Manchester. Customers will soon be able to purchase them through his company’s Web site, he said.

Susan Yucht of Shaftsbury has been selling them to support the Bennington Food and Fuel Fund, an organization raising money to help those in need in the community. Money raised is being used to support the fund. Yucht said she’s found that the magnets were “easy for me to sell.”