Due to conversion switches, machine guns return to U.S. streets
The earsplitting, heartstopping roar of fully automatic weapons hasn’t been often heard on America’s streets since Congress largely outlawed them in 1934.
But now it’s back, owing to a small device that is easily plugged into certain handguns and rifles, converting semiautomatic firearms into guns capable of firing 20 bullets in one second — with one pull of the trigger.
In Sacramento last year, a handgun converted into a machine gun was used during a gun battle that left six dead, in what has been called Sacramento’s deadliest mass shooting. In Minneapolis, eight people were wounded in August amid a spray of 40 bullets fired in just seconds. In 2021, a Houston police officer was killed and another wounded by a suspect with a pistol equipped with the device.
And in Washington, D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood in August last year, a drug dealer who was shot at returned fire with 24 shots in one burst along North Capitol Street, authorities said. His target, a car that had been used in a drive-by shooting, sped away, while two people were wounded, according to court records.
“It’s incredibly scary,” said Matthew M. Graves, Washington, D.C.’s U.S. attorney, citing the rising number of conversion devices found in the city in recent years. There were 27 guns recovered with the devices in 2021. The number rose to 119 last year, and, as of late October, the number was more than 150, Graves said. Police often find extended magazines attached to the guns, to hold more than the standard 12 or 13 bullets contained in most magazines, and they have even seized round drum magazines, which can hold 50 or more bullets.
“We have no shortage, unfortunately, of crime scenes where we have strong reason to believe, based on the number of rounds expended, that one of these devices was used,” Graves said. Local and federal authorities could not provide any examples of a converted automatic weapon causing any woundings or deaths in the District so far.
The devices have many names: Switch. Giggle switch. Sear. Auto sear. Conversion device. Glock switch (some of which have Glock’s logo fraudulently printed on them). Even though they are small – switches for pistols are about the size of a playing die – and don’t themselves contain bullets, the devices are considered machine guns by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Craig B. Kailimai, special agent in charge of ATF’s Washington field division.
“That would be illegal,” he said. “The device itself.”
The devices can be made of metal or plastic, and authorities believe some are imported from China and sold on the streets. But 3D printers also have been used to make both the square-shaped switch for pistols and an S-shaped device that slides into guns such as the AR-15 to convert them to fully automatic, Kailimai said. The printing process takes about 45 minutes.
Under some circumstances, civilians can legally purchase automatic weapons. The conversion switches for both semiautomatic handguns and rifles also can be purchased legally under certain conditions. Both the American military and law enforcement have uses for automatic weapons, so law enforcement officials cannot approach gun manufacturers and ask them to stop making guns that can be easily converted, Kailimai said. Glock officials have said they cannot change the design of their pistol to foil the switches.
The ATF said it recovered more than 5,400 illegal switches between 2017 and 2021, a 570 percent increase from the preceding five years. In both pistols and rifles, the switch works by blocking the mechanism in the gun that requires a trigger pull before each shot. With a switch in place, one trigger pull can fire the weapon until it is out of ammunition.
“I think they’ve been understudied. We don’t have a lot of great data,” said Daniel Webster, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “But it’s relatively intuitive, something that creates the equivalent of an automatic weapon is going to get a lot more bullets flying in an incredibly short amount of time,” striking more targets and reducing the amount of time people have to escape drive-by or mass shootings, Webster said. He said that makes the device more attractive to mass shooters and criminal street crews.
Webster said legislators should enact higher penalties for possession of the switches, prosecutors should seek those penalties, and judges should impose them
“It’s the functional equivalent of an automatic weapon,” he said. “Who among the law-abiding gun ownership crowd wants to argue that these are fundamental to their Second Amendment rights?” Webster said that “law enforcement should make it clear that federal law on firearms should apply to every weapon that has a switch.” He said prosecutors who have reduced prosecutions for gun possession in urban areas should make exceptions for guns with switches attached.
Graves agreed. “They’re basically being treated the same in our criminal justice system as the firearms that don’t have these devices there,” he said. He noted that Washington, D.C., Council member Brooke Pinto proposed legislation “adding a separate penalty for possessing a machine gun and using a machine gun in a crime, which we think is incredibly important. We need to increase the penalties.”
Pinto said in an email that she has worked with Graves to address violent crime in the District and is pushing a bill that would “increase the maximum penalties for individuals firing a large number of bullets at a time, and requiring that sentences for possession of extremely dangerous weapons, like machine guns, be stacked on top of baseline penalties, rather than running concurrently.” She said the D.C. Council’s judiciary and public safety committee held a hearing this month on a bill with these provisions “aimed at the small number of offenders engaged in most of the violent crime.”
Washington, D.C., police and federal agents have seized guns with switches while executing search warrants for drugs, in traffic stops after chases, and after arrests for robberies and carjackings. This month, the U.S. Capitol Police tried to pull over a stolen car that took off and crashed into a barricade. Officers then found a gun with a 22round extended magazine in the car and another gun with a switch near where a passenger was arrested.
No woundings or homicides have been linked to the switch in the Washington, D.C., area. In Houston, Officer William Jeffrey was shot and killed by a man firing an automatic handgun in October 2021, and three officers were wounded by another switchequipped gun in January 2022.
“There is absolutely no reason or no room for our suspects to be armed like this,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference. He showed body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of Jeffrey. “This is a threat that is here, and it’s a threat to everybody – law enforcement and citizens in every neighborhood in our community.”