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High caliber business

Sales are booming for Serbu Firearms, a Town 'N County shop that manufactures big guns.

By MIKE BRASSFIELD
Published April 29, 2005

TOWN 'N COUNTRY - For a company that packs so much heat, Serbu Firearms keeps a low profile.

There's no sign on its front door. The place is unobtrusively tucked in a row of auto body shops in a no-frills industrial park next to the Veterans Expressway.

Nothing would tip you off that, behind that unmarked door, local entrepreneur Mark Serbu and his crew are manufacturing powerful .50-caliber rifles, right on the edge of what's legal.

"This is the biggest, baddest gun you can buy without a special license," said Serbu, 43. "It's like having control of lightning in your hand."

Business is booming nicely. The company was flooded with orders from California just before the sale of these guns was banned there. Serbu expects other states to follow suit, one by one.

The .50-caliber rifle is one of the most-discussed legal weapons on the market today. Gun control advocates contend that the rifles could be used to shoot into oil refineries, airplanes or armored vehicles from thousands of feet away, making them ideal weapons for terror.

Gun enthusiasts say that's ridiculous. They say these rifles are used only in precision target-shooting competitions; that the guns are not used in crimes because they're too heavy and unwieldy; and that terrorists intent on wreaking havoc are far more likely to use bombs, black market machine guns or rocket-propelled grenades.

As for Serbu, he makes no apologies and sleeps quite soundly. He recently took his five employees to Hooters for lunch to celebrate the sale of their 1,000th gun.

He matter-of-factly explains that he runs a perfectly legal, federally licensed, constitutionally protected business.

"It's tough having a gun company because people think I'm a lunatic and insurance companies don't want to provide the coverage I need," he said. "You don't get any respect at all."

His customers, he says, are simply high-end gun buyers all over the country who are into long-range target shooting. They find him through his Web site or his ads in gun magazines like Shotgun News or Very High Power, a magazine for .50-caliber shooters.

"When I was 4 years old, my Christmas list asked for a gun with "real shooting bullets,' " he said.

The particular type of gun he sells is a relatively new invention.

In World War II, the Browning machine gun, or BMG, still popular today, fired a lot of .50-caliber bullets with little accuracy. Then in the early 1980s, a Tennesseean named Ronnie Barrett crafted a rifle that fired the same powerful bullets, one at a time but with much more accuracy.

Thus was born the modern .50-caliber BMG rifle, now being marketed by Barrett, Serbu and a host of other small companies. Its bullets are more destructive on impact than ammo from other rifles.

"The first time someone shoots a .50-caliber rifle," Serbu said, "they usually yell out some kind of expletive."

Serbu's product is called the BFG-50. (He has a subversive sense of humor; BFG is an acronym for a phrase that can't be printed in a family newspaper.)

It's a single-shot rifle that's about 4 feet long, weighs 22 pounds and costs $2,195. With the gun mounted on a two-legged stand and equipped with a telescopic sight, a skilled marksman can shoot accurately up to 1,000 yards, or more than a half-mile.

Why so much firepower?

For fun, Serbu says.

"Guns are like jewelry for men. Guns are to men what shoes are to women," he said. "People say, what do you need that for? But it's like Ted Nugent says: We don't need Corvettes that go 150 mph. This is America, the land of excess."

To unwind, he'll take one of his .50-cals up to the Hernando Sportsman's Club, an 80-acre shooting facility off U.S. 19 near Weeki Wachee. At big gun ranges like that all over the country, serious .50-caliber shooters compete in 1,000-yard matches, taking aim at faraway targets as pennants track which way the wind is blowing.

"People who haven't shot don't realize how fun it is," Serbu said.

The first floor looks like any machine shop, except for the stacks of steel gun barrels. Rock music plays on boom boxes as men in shorts, T-shirts and work boots operate lathes and milling machines and welders. An engraving device carves serial numbers onto heat-treated steel. The place smells industrial - grease and metal dust.

It's not a store; you can't walk in and buy a gun.

Upstairs is the office, where Serbu takes orders via phone and e-mail. He works on designs here, using 3-D computer simulations to analyze a virtual gun's weight, balance, recoil and capacity to handle stress.

His company's second most popular product is the Super Shorty, a 12-gauge shotgun with a 6 1/2-inch barrel, similar to a sawed-off shotgun. Serbu says it's legal in about 35 states but is highly restricted - customers have to fill out paperwork to buy one.

Serbu earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of South Florida in 1990. He taught himself to design guns and has been in business since 1996.

The .50-caliber rifle is a specialty weapon for a limited market. The major gun companies don't make them. But the nation is dotted with small companies like Serbu's.

There are four licensed gun manufacturers in Hillsborough County alone, 15 in Pinellas County and 94 in Florida, said Carlos Baixauli, a Tampa-based agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"Some of these are small mom-and-pop companies," the ATF agent said. "But just because they have a license doesn't mean they're actually manufacturing firearms."

Serbu is sticking with his niche market.

"A company like Smith & Wesson, Winchester, Remington - for them, selling 15,000 guns a year is an abysmal failure," Serbu said. "For us, if we sell 200 a year, we're happy."

Still, with business growing, he's looking to move into larger quarters.

"I just bought land in Drew Park with all the money California put in my pocket," he said. "It wasn't until those idiots banned my gun that I could afford it."

Californians can own one if they bought it before then. So Serbu was deluged with orders.

"We took in six figures in about three weeks," he said. Based on his previous annual sales in California, he figures he sold 20 years worth of rifles there in three months.

California stands alone. Lawmakers in at least six other states - Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington - have considered banning the guns, but haven't done so. And it hasn't been an issue in Florida.

The argument against .50-caliber rifles is that they're too powerful and that terrorists could use them to target planes or fuel depots.

"If you do a Google search for a gun that can shoot down aircraft, this is the gun that'll pop up on your search," said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "It's a great tool for the military, but there's no legitimate reason it should be available to the wider public."

Gun rights advocates say that argument stokes fears of terrorism to push an antigun agenda.

"The hijackers of September 11th were not armed with guns," said Kelly Hobbs, a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association. "Banning firearms commonly used by law-abiding citizens is not an effective means to combat terrorism."

As for shooting down an airplane, "it's nonsense," Hobbs said. "If you ask any average shooter, they'll tell you it would be highly unlikely that situation would occur."

As for Serbu, he figures that terrorists aren't going to follow the law, and that they're more likely to use black market machine guns than his rifles.

People on both sides of the debate agree that .50-caliber rifles won't be banned nationwide in the near future.

In fact, Congress allowed a 1994 federal assault weapons ban to expire last September; the law had banned 19 types of semiautomatic firearms that are now legal again.

Still, Serbu expects other places to begin following California's lead. "State by state," he said.

He predicts he'll get an influx of cash every time a state outlaws his guns and people buy them before the ban takes effect. But over the long term, his market would be taken away piece by piece until nothing is left.

"But by then," he said, "I'll be retired."

- Times correspondent Tracy Small contributed to this report.

[Last modified April 28, 2005, 08:37:02]