Three employees at Canada's only handgun manufacturer are accused of smuggling gun parts out of the factory, assembling them into one of the country's largest stockpiles of illegal handguns and selling them on the street. Police are investigating suspicions that some of the guns were used in several murders -- including two double homicides near Toronto -- and the attempted murder of a police officer in 1995.

   These handguns are especially attractive to criminals because most of them were assembled without serial numbers -- the identifying tag used to trace the chain of ownership when a gun is used in a crime, investigators said.

   The year-long probe, headed by the Ontario Provincial Police's special unit, tracked three workers at Para-Ordnance Manufacturing Inc., a company in Toronto that has earned a strong reputation for producing powerful and accurate handguns.

   At least one of the workers was a gunsmith, said Detective Inspector Ross Bingley, who headed the investigation.

   The workers allegedly smuggled hundreds of gun parts out of the plant over an unknown period of time and assembled them in their homes.

   The semi-automatic guns, which came in a variety of calibres, were then offered for sale through a trafficking network based in the Toronto area.

   The guns were selling for about $1,100 each and several were bought by undercover officers during the investigation, including agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and .

   The weapons were so desirable in the underworld that the ring was planning to smuggle some across the border for sale in Detroit, Det.-Insp. Bingley said.

   "Unlike other commodities, like drugs, where it gets out there and is consumed, one crime gun can hang around for years and do all kinds of damage. The criminal element can wreak havoc with an unserialized semi-automatic pistol," he said.

   "They were in it for the money. They didn't really care what happened [with the guns] or the people involved with them."

   Police arrested six men and one woman, including the three male employees, and seized 95 handguns, 14 long-barrelled guns, hundreds of bullet magazines and more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition.

   An American specialist on the industry said the case, if proven true, suggests serious security lapses at Para-Ordnance. "It is not unheard of to have corruption problems within companies," said Tom Diaz, author of Making A Killing: The Business of Guns in America.

   "In terms of physically concealing them on the person, it would be fairly easy to smuggle the stuff out. The question is, do [Para-Ordnance] have metal detectors, metal scanners and do body searches?" said Mr. Diaz, a former instructor who is now a gun control advocate with the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center.

   The handguns are comprised of four large metal pieces -- the slide, the barrel, the frame and the magazine, each no longer than a pen -- and many small parts, such as springs and levers.

   Mr. Diaz said criminals often go to great lengths to destroy a gun's serial number, including etching the metal with acid, but advances in technology can sometimes still reveal the tag.

   "If there was never a serial number to begin with, that gun becomes the criminal's best friend," he said.

   Several telephone calls to Para-Ordnance officials were not returned yesterday.

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