The quiet village of Stevens Point was once home to the greatest mass killer the world ever knew so maybe he only took second place. Few know about James Lee because a man who intends to kill off a major portion of humanity is best served by an unassuming temperament. Despite his docile appearance, his craft resulted in more people taking the early train to the hereafter than is credible to Nature alone. Who was this fiend, this Rembrandt of serial killers?

James Paris Lee was born at Harwich, Scotland, in 1831, the son of George Lee and Margaret Paris. The couple emigrated to Canada in 1836. At 17, James apprenticed to his father’s trade of jeweler and watchmaker. He established a business in Chatham, Ontario, in 1850 and married Caroline Chrysler. About 1856 he moved to Janesville, and then seeking new opportunity headed into the woods and an insincere outpost variously called Stevens or Stephens Point. Here he resided until 1864.

Commerce for a jeweler and watch-maker is dependent on the local prosperity and Stevens Point, though prosperous enough, wasn’t inclined to an extravagance beyond a two dollar watch. Being adept and fascinated with mechanics James Lee turned his trade to gunsmithing, a more lucrative enterprise in a region once called the gun-totin’ capital of Wisconsin. The onset of the Civil War combined with an industrious northern attitude roused within the public a fever for mechanical improvements. The chance of a government contract for improved weapons encouraged every village gunsmith to invent. The result was hundreds of unique designs for breech loading, sealing the chamber and provision for a second round.

The lamp burned late in the shop window of James Lee, filing an awkward shape he called a rifle bolt, a bolt it was for well did it resemble the latch on the garden gate. A breech loading mechanism had been devised by Spenser, a metal cartridge of Henry, gun cotton by Shonbein, dynamite by Alfred Nobel. The prospects for a single inventor developing a marketable munition was small as the rewards were great. President Lincoln, something of a tinker himself, encouraged the War Department to seek out independent gunsmiths with superior products. The chance at a government contract occasioned Lee’s relocation to Milwaukee in 1864 where he established the Lee Arms Company. In 1875 he moved to Springfield, Mass., site of the federal armory, to supervise the construction of his breechloading single shot rifle. At the same time he was devising an improved bolt action for Remington Arms Company of Ilion, N.Y. Ever the entrepreneur, he established near the end of his career a second Lee Arms Company in Wilkes Barre, Pa. James Lee died on Feb. 24, 1904.

The patents granted to the Lee rifle cited its breech-loading mechanism, the bolt action and the detachable magazine in front of the trigger guard. The Lee bolt locked into place by a natural downward movement, tightly sealing the chamber. Almost every sporting arm since has used James Lee’s simple and reliable mechanism, the number of moving parts reduced to an absolute minimum, the action reliable and fool-proof despite an army’s best effort to prove otherwise. Unlike other designs a soldier in the field could reload the magazine without difficulty, its mechanical function little altered by cold, dampness and dirt. The bolt sealed so tight the cartridge size and propellant were reduced while maintaining both velocity and accuracy.

Following trials in 1888, production of the MKI Magazine Rifle was begun, two years later the rifle was renamed the Lee-Metford. When weapon propellant changed over to cordite from black powder the result of higher velocities was serious damage to the rifling. The 1896 Lee-Enfield solved this problem. It offered a simple mechanism, cheap to manufacture and difficult to screw up. The weapon’s initial use came during the British intercession of the Boer War where it was cited for remarkable long-range accuracy, the Lee-Enfield the weapon used by the infamous “Breaker Morant conspiracy.” Production at numerous arsenals and licensees around the world resulted in the Lee-Enfield being arguably the most popular, the most numerous firearm the world has ever known. It outfitted the private soldier in the period of two world wars, was a participant in every nicene, internicene and political malcontent during, between and after.

How many Lee-Enfields were produced is open to conjecture. The Stevens Arms Company manufactured a million plus between 1941 and 1945. Australian companies made 650,000 during the same period. Other factories in Toronto and three near Birmingham, England, manufactured huge numbers also. In all something like sixteen million Lee-Enfields found a role in the theaters of the 20th century, not including unlicensed copies. No backstreet shopkeeper of Stevens Point ever had such an influence on the world as James Paris Lee.

A tidy man thought fastidious by some, James Lee was changed by the Civil War. Watch making was interesting but a locksmith with a penchant for invention can do well in the procurement trade. It was a time of violence and invention: the home appliance, the reaper, cotton gin, twine knotter and gun bolt, because of the war the government was there to reward the discerning inventor.

What were James Lee’s thoughts those nights in his gunshop on a back lane of Stevens Point? A twisted limb of metal clamped in a vice and a cutting file warm in his hands. Did he have any idea of the fates his arts would touch? How many died as a result of his handiwork is unfair and cruel to ask. Lee was not to blame yet no protestant mind can fail to ask, what if he stuck to watches?

Surely another would have arrived at the application of the gate latch to the rifle breech. He was after all only the apprentice and not the sorcerer himself. A cut here, a cut there do a facet make, whether gem or gravel is up to forces other than the stone cutter.