The Buffalo News, Inc. - June 13, 2005

IN THE GUN FACTORY
WHERE AMERICA'S CHEAPEST SEMI-AUTOMATICS-WEAPONS OF CHOICE FOR BUFFALO CRIMINALS-ARE MADE

By LOU MICHEL, DAN HERBECK and SUSAN SCHULMAN, News Staff Reporters

MADISON TOWNSHIP, Ohio - Three nondescript buildings sit off a rural highway in the rolling hills of central Ohio, the stubby pre-fabricated kind that dot the landscape from one town to another across the United States.

Inside the buildings' metal walls, the occasional pin-up of a scantily clad woman or the sound of a favorite country song - like Garth Brooks' "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association" - helps keep the 30 workers in good spirits as they toil 10 hours a day, five days a week.

Almost anything could be manufactured in these buildings, but in fact, a one-of-a-kind product is created here.

This is where the cheapest semi-automatic handguns in America are made.

It's where zinc and plastic melded together on July 2, 2000, to create the 9mm pistol that three years later nearly killed Buffalo teenager Daniel Williams.

It's where most of the approximately 250 guns were made that James Nigel Bostic bought, then illegally dumped onto Buffalo's streets.

It's where an assault rifle used in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre was built.

And it's here in these buildings that Hi-Point Firearms owner Thomas Deeb must confront the dark side of his dream.

Deeb said he makes the cheapest handguns in America so everyone - particularly the poor - can afford one for protection or recreation. The guns sell for as little as $79 - less than some sneakers cost.

"I'm speaking from my heart," Deeb, 55, said, while sitting outside his factory. "Say a guy goes fishing and wants to carry a gun in his tackle box. You don't want to put a $700 Glock in a tackle box."

"I didn't have a lot of money growing up to buy firearms, and I wanted working people to be able to afford a weapon without having to take out a mortgage on their house," he added. "Poor people need protection more than other people."

A criminal constituency

But Deeb's guns rapidly became favorites - some say the favorite - among young criminals in America's cities.

His company, critics say, makes the Saturday night special of the new millennium, but with added firepower. "They are a lot more powerful," says Buffalo Deputy Police Commissioner Robert Chella.

"Hi-Point is now the premiere manufacturer of cheap handguns and a very cheap 9mm assault rifle," adds Kristen Rand, with the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

A federal government study found the Hi-Point among the two most recovered handguns at crimes scenes in Buffalo in each of the last five years. And in the past year, police said, the gun is showing up more frequently in Niagara Falls, also.

The 9mm Hi-Point is the second-most popular handgun traced to criminals in New York State; it ranks first in popularity with criminals in Cincinnati.

And nationally, Hi-Points were the third-most popular guns seized at crime scenes in 50 major cities in 2000, according to U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives data.

What's more, the agency found, Hi-Points reached the hands of criminals more quickly - within a year of their original purchase - than any other type of handgun used by criminals between the ages of 18 and 24.

The crimes committed with these weapons make headlines.

A Hi-Point rifle was part of the deadly arsenal two teenagers used in the Columbine High School attacks in Colorado. Twelve students and a teacher were slain before the attackers killed themselves.

Three months later, a Hi-Point handgun was used to kill a Cleveland police vice detective.

In November 2002, a 17-year-old firing a Hi-Point 9mm handgun killed a police officer in West Jordan, Utah.

And the Hi-Points that Bostic sold on the streets of Buffalo have been tied to slayings, robberies, and many other crimes over the past five years.

Deeb knows the low price tag on his guns - ranging from $79 to $199 - attracts criminals. In comparison, a Smith & Wesson sells for over $500 and a Glock for as much as $850.

"The dope dealers and gang bangers don't like to spend a lot of money on weapons," Deeb said. "They tend to throw them away."

And he said that bothers him.

'I thought about quitting'

When he learned that one of his rifles was used in the student massacre at Columbine in 1999, Deeb closed his factory for a day and considered leaving the gun business.

"I was just sick over it," he said. "I thought about quitting. Then said, ""I'm not going to be defeated by evil.' "

Instead, Deeb reopened his factory and redoubled efforts, he said, to make his guns more easily identifiable through ballistics testing and a second, hidden serial number.

He provides trigger locks, and, he said, stopped making a chrome-plated handgun popular with criminals.

"Money isn't everything in life. I feel I bear some responsibility, and that's why I do everything possible to catch the bad guys," he said.

Not everyone hears the ring of truth in Deeb's remarks.

One of the first detectives to investigate Bostic's gun-running hammered Deeb's business.

"Those guns are used to shoot people. You can't have a conscience and sell these guns," said Sonny Songer, a retired detective from the Fairborn, Ohio, police force.

The Bostic case wasn't Songer's only experience with Hi-Points.

"We had a reverse type of drive-by shooting here, when a 19-year-old girl who just had a baby was driving in a car and someone shot her in the neck and killed her with a 9mm Hi-Point rifle," Songer said.

Rand, legislative director of the gun control lobby in Washington, also scoffed at the company's claim that it is committed to making affordable guns for working people.

"Hi-Point has filled the niche that used to be filled by the California companies that used to make junk guns, Saturday night specials," Rand said. "(Deeb has) a duty to step back and look at why these guns are so attractive to criminals. They are out to make a buck."

From rags to riches

Wearing blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, Deeb looks more like the television repairman he once was than the millionaire gun maker he now is.

He was raised in Wabash, Ind., one of six children. His father was a barber.

Speaking with a Midwestern twang, Deeb said that, as a kid, he was fascinated with guns. At 17, he said, he bought himself his first handgun, a Ruger.

He dropped out of high school and later joined the Air Force, serving during the Vietnam War. He eventually opened a television repair service center and video rental stores.

But what Deeb really wanted to do was make and sell guns.

After spending a couple years designing the handguns and rifles he wanted to mass produce, Deeb in 1992 opened his Hi-Point factory near Mansfield.

It's a family operation. Deeb's wife, Shirley, runs the office, and most of their six children have also worked there.

Hi-Point produces five types of inexpensive handguns and two rifles.

Deeb said he is able to make guns cheaply by using inexpensive zinc and plastic in certain parts of the gun, rather than the more expensive steel and aluminum other gun makers use.

The 9 mm, he said, can be assembled in 42 minutes from its 38 parts.

His workers, making $11 an hour plus health benefits, are proud of their products.

"Real, hard-working guns for real, hard-working people," said Mark Weber, 35, a Hi-Point employee. "I own one of all the pistols he makes - five of them."

Co-worker Dan Stover, 24, said people have varying reactions when they hear about his job.

"Some people think it's cool," he said. "Some people frown on it. I've heard people say we're making guns to kill people. I tell them we're making guns for enjoyment and protection."

The owner's 27-year-old son helps run the plant. "They say we're making guns for criminals. The truth is, my dad is one of the best, most caring people you ever met," said Thomas Deeb II. "Guns don't kill. People do."

The elder Deeb estimates his factory produced some 700,000 guns since 1992, and the company, industry data shows, is now the fourth-biggest handgun maker in the country.

Deeb makes $1 million a year, and lives in a $400,000, 5,600-square-foot house on 16 acres of land.

Professional opinions

Within the industry, and among gun owners, Deeb's cheap guns get mixed reviews.

"They work fine, are as accurate as the rest of the lot and while not exactly blued-steel, they aren't too awful to look at," American Handgunner magazine wrote of one of the 9mm Hi-Points in its 2003 issue.

"This gun functioned OK, but its top-heavy balance made it almost unshootable in our view," Gun-Test magazine wrote in 1999 of another model of the 9mm Hi-Point.

On the streets of Buffalo, where Hi-Points are used to kill, maim and intimidate, Deeb's claim of wanting to make cheap guns for the poor is viewed by some as self-serving, even insulting.

"The poor people?" Georgia Bostic, James Nigel Bostic's grandmother, asked incredulously. "He's nuts. The poor people don't need them. Make them for the rich."

That's "his excuse for making money," added Walter Knightner, a convicted shooter speaking from Auburn Correctional Facility, a state prison.

"He's cutthroat," Knightner said. "He sees an opportunity because Glocks cost $800."

Knightner said the Hi-Point handgun has a lousy reputation on the streets.

"Everyone I know says they was bull----. They jam too easy. They don't work," said Knightner, who was convicted of firing a Hi-Point at several officers with one of the guns Bostic dumped in Buffalo.

But Taurean Smith, also jailed after shooting one of the Hi-Points Bostic sold in Buffalo, said the guns work fine.

"You gotta shoot it like a revolver," Smith said, speaking from Five Points Correctional Facility, a state prison in the Finger Lakes.

Deeb said he was unaware Bostic had illegally sold Hi-Points in Buffalo to people like Smith and Knightner. When told of the gun trafficking case, Deeb slapped his forehead in frustration, then called Bostic "the anti-Christ."

"He should be held responsible for all the crimes that were committed with those guns," Deeb said.

A Bush backer

Deeb's answer to gun violence is to enforce existing laws - not to further restrict gun sales or production.

"If you have punishment, the crime decreases," Deeb said.

His position echoes the National Rifle Association, but Deeb said he is not an NRA member.

He is, however, a big fan of President Bush and gave Republicans $30,000 in the 2004 election.

"I support George W. Bush. He's really empowered federal agents to put pressure on people who commit firearms crimes, and that's why crime is decreasing," Deeb said.

It's a position some federal law enforcement agents privately disagree with, saying their funding and staffing have remained stagnant during the Bush administration, while their duties have expanded.

"Bush has been good on attacking street criminals after the guns are used in shootings, but not for going after the sources of crime guns," said Gerald A. Nunziato, a retired supervisor from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.

Nevertheless, a photograph of Bush and Vice President Cheney hangs above Deeb's desk. On the desk are gun parts, including bullet shells made into a desk ornament holding his business cards.

It's a reflection of the dream Deeb has had since he was a kid in Indiana.

And today, while he said it breaks his heart to hear his guns are involved in violent crime, Deeb also said he can live with himself, and how he makes his living.

"When someone uses something that used to belong to you to do something evil, it's their fault, not yours," Deeb said.

But Rosa Gibson, a Buffalo neighborhood activist who has known many crime victims, said Deeb sounds like a man trying to justify an unsavory business.

"He makes cheap guns. He's a millionaire. He's in it for money," said Gibson. "In this community, cheap guns are going to the criminals, not law-abiding citizens. I know very few law-abiding people who go out to buy guns for their own protection."

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