Police called it criminals’ “weapon of choice.” Then, in July 1993, a crazed California mortgage broker used two Tec-DC9s, one of them modified with a Hell-Fire switch (enabling it to shoot 300 rounds a minute), to kill eight people and wound six in a San Francisco law office. Street gangs immediately liked the gun, which retailed for around $200, but it really gained popularity in the mid-Eighties after Miami Vice began to regularly feature dapper drug lords carrying it. It fires faster than an average pistol and, like the Hi-Point, has a vented barrel so the shooter’s hand doesn’t burn while emptying the thirty-two-round magazine. This gun, which was used in the Littleton massacre, was originally designed for South African and Rhodesian police, to brutally control riots. When the Tec-9 was cited by name in a 1991 manufacturer-liability law in the District of Columbia, its maker gave the gun a nylon shoulder sling and renamed it the Tec-DC9 (reportedly for District of Columbia). The industry plays the same game with gun laws at the state level. When Colt’s AR-15, the civilian version of the Army’s M-16 rifle, was made illegal to produce by the ban, Colt replaced it with the Colt Sporter, which is different from the AR-15 only in that it is missing a flash suppressor and a bayonet mount. The stipulated minimum of three particular features has provided the industry with tremendous wiggle room: Companies have simply made small modifications to their existing guns without detracting from the guns’ firepower or concealability. The law takes a more limited view than Rand. The gun has not only a detachable magazine – which Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., calls “the essence of an assault weapon” – but also a vented barrel, to prevent overheating, and a pistol grip, so that the trigger can be pulled quickly while the gun is pointed from the hip. The boys’ Hi-Point, which cost about $180, was designed by Tom Deeb to be an affordable weapon with a high degree of lethality. The 9 mm caliber is particularly attractive to the younger generation of gun buyers, as it was the first big jump in caliber beyond the traditional. The carbine rifle is shorter and lighter than a conventional rifle it was invented during World War II for troops charging into battle. Under the law’s elaborate requirements, the 9 mm Hi-Point carbine used by Harris and Klebold does not qualify as an assault weapon.
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