TO MURDER HIS PARENTS and two classmates in Springfield, Oregon, last May, Kip Kinkel chose a .22 Ruger pistol and a 9 mm Glock, as well as a Ruger semiautomatic rifle with a fifty-round clip. For the Columbine High School massacre on April 20th in Littleton, Colorado – in which fifteen people were killed and twenty-three wounded – Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used a Tec-DC9 semiautomatic handgun, a 9 mm Hi-Point semiautomatic carbine rifle and two sawed-off shotguns (supplemented by more than fifty bombs). All of these guns were available legally, with no licensing of the user or registration of the gun required. Shielded by the determined efforts of the gun lobby, gun makers, dealers and owners operate in their own world, with virtually no government supervision.
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In 1994, the federal government did ban many assault weapons. Gun-control advocates and firearms-industry leaders agreed that a detachable ammunition magazine, which allows for clips with hundreds of rounds, was central to the definition of an assault weapon. But to the advocates’ dismay, the law as enacted specifies that a gun must have at least two additional characteristics, such as a flash suppressor or a folding stock, to be banned.
Under the law’s elaborate requirements, the 9 mm Hi-Point carbine used by Harris and Klebold does not qualify as an assault weapon. The carbine rifle is shorter and lighter than a conventional rifle; it was invented during World War II for troops charging into battle. 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 .22, .38 and .45. 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 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.
