A Machine Gun Is Just Pistol Plus $50 Device --- 3-D printers make illegal conversions easy, a fresh menace for law enforcement

"Sheriff's Deputy Jeremy Malone's life ended moments after he pulled over a car without license plates in rural Mississippi last month.

The driver pulled out a pistol illegally modified with a small device known as a Glock switch, which made it capable of fully automatic gunfire, according to police.

Malone, a 44-year-old father of three, was killed instantly in a barrage of bullets.

Nearly a century after a federal crackdown largely ended the use of machine guns by criminals, they are back on the rise thanks to a modification that lets Glock-brand pistols fire continuously with one trigger pull.

Glock switches are about the size of a thumbnail, easy to install, and typically sell for $50 to $100. Authorities have struggled recently to regulate them because they can be made on 3-D printers. Previously, most Glock switches in the U.S. were imported.

"They are easily made, they are non-traceable and the profit margin is so high," said Jeff Boshek, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Dallas field division.

A representative for Glock didn't respond to requests for comment. Similar devices can make other pistols and AR-15-style rifles fire automatically, but those aren't as commonly used in violent crimes.

Their growing use means that while the number of shootings in major cities is falling following a pandemic-era spike, each shooting is becoming potentially deadlier.

Police in Washington, D.C., say the growing number of Glock switches contributed to the city's 274 homicides last year, the most since 1997. While the number of shootings was 9% above the average for the prior three years, the number resulting in death was 22% higher, Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a recent city council hearing. Police recovered 195 Glock switches last year, up from 66 in 2021, Smith said.

Nationwide, alerts for automatic gunfire last year rose 97% from 2021 across 127 jurisdictions with gunshot-detection technology, according to SoundThinking, the company behind the technology -- 9,683 alerts, with 98,031 rounds fired.

"We haven't seen this many machine guns used in crimes since Prohibition," said Thomas Chittum, a senior vice president at SoundThinking who previously worked at ATF.

The federal government imposed restrictions on machine guns in 1934 to crack down on Thompson submachine guns -- "Tommy guns" used by gangsters and bootleggers. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a law banning the manufacture of new machine guns for sale to civilians, as well as devices that modify weapons to fire automatically. Machine guns made before 1986 are primarily owned by wealthy collectors.

ATF officials in the Dallas-Fort Worth area seized 300 machine-gun conversion devices in 2023, most of them Glock switches, up from 40 in 2021. In November, a Dallas officer was injured by a murder suspect firing at police with a fully automatic Glock.

One of the gunmen in a 2022 shootout in Sacramento, Calif., that killed six and wounded 12 fired more than two dozen rounds with a Glock that was illegally modified, according to police.

Glock handguns typically carry six to 17 rounds, but larger magazines can expand their capacity to 50 or more.

Some of the biggest purveyors of Glock switches are individuals manufacturing them at home with 3-D printers, law-enforcement investigations have found.

Xavier Watson, a Fort Worth, Texas, man who pleaded guilty last year to illegal possession and transfer of machine guns, bragged to undercover federal agents that he could produce about 400 Glock switches and other machine-gun conversion devices a day with his two 3-D printers, according to court documents. Watson sold the agent 10 switches for $600. 

An attorney for Watson didn't respond to requests for comment.

The proliferation of Glock switches has spurred state lawmakers to call for state-level bans so offenders can be prosecuted without having to involve federal law enforcement. Seven states -- including Mississippi, Alabama and Pennsylvania -- are considering banning Glock switches and other similar devices, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, while 21 already have such bans in place.

In Mississippi, Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said law-enforcement officials across the state support the proposal. Recent shootings in Jackson have involved a Glock and an AR-15 modified to shoot automatically, he said.

"That's something you use in wartime or in a military setting, that's not something you would use on a street," he said. "It's too much firepower."" [1]

1. U.S. News: A Machine Gun Is Just Pistol Plus $50 Device --- 3-D printers make illegal conversions easy, a fresh menace for law enforcement. Elinson, Zusha; Calvert, Scott.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Feb 2024: A.3.