YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Some Yakima residents are complaining that new street banners meant to emulate rays of sunlight instead seem to depict firearms.

The banners, designed by the Seattle firm AHBL, feature a field of dark red cut horizontally by three yellow waves. The city paid $2,500 to create the banners and another $1,500 to install 46 of them from new lampposts on either side of a freshly renovated stretch of Yakima Avenue.

The design was meant to emulate rays of sunlight or perhaps rivers, said Michael Morales, deputy director of Yakima's community and economic development department.

Others view the banners differently.

Four people have contacted the nonprofit Committee for Downtown Yakima to say the banners look like rifles, or handguns in outstretched arms, said Mandi Ellison, the committee's director of user experience.

"The association I had was pistols in people's hands, three arms with pistols," freelance designer Ed Miketa said.

Such imagery, intentional or not, is inappropriate for a community battling gang problems and trying to shed its image as dangerous or crime-ridden, he said.

Miketa has volunteered to create a new design, free of charge. But Morales believes those claiming to see guns are making something out of nothing.

"You can get anything out of any kind of design, I guess," he said.

Sean Hawkins, deputy executive director of the Committee for Downtown Yakima, said he can understand how people misinterpreted the banners. He didn't see firearms on the design when it was first presented to area merchants in April, but he noticed the resemblance when the banners were hung in December.

Regardless, the plan has always been to rotate the banners as finances allow, and if a change needs to be made sooner because of the gun imagery issue, it can be done, Hawkins said.

"If people are offended by it and that seems to be the feeling of everyone, we'll find a solution to it," he said.