Anti-gun lawmakers and their gun control allies exploit menacing language to bolster their arguments against lawful arms: ordinary semi-automatic rifles and pistols become “weapons of war” and “assault weapons;” “large capacity magazines” actually refers to standard-issue magazines; and personally-made firearms are referred to as the much more sinister sounding “ghost guns.”
The latest in this semantic stigmatization is “machinegun-convertible pistol,” aimed at Glock and Glock-style semiautomatic handguns. Several states have imposed, or are in the process of enacting, bans aimed at one of the most ubiquitous handguns in America through laws prohibiting “machinegun-convertible” guns, because these lawful guns may be modified by the installation of a converter or “switch” device that enables automatic firing.
Such laws follow in the wake of lawsuits against Glock by various jurisdictions, supported by gun control groups, in which the central allegation is that the gun manufacturer somehow “facilitates” the proliferation of illegal machine guns possessed and used by criminals, despite the fact that neither Glock nor any manufacturer of Glock-style pistols manufactures or imports the switches or promotes the illegal modification of their firearms.
Baltimore and Maryland’s lawsuit against Glock, for instance, claims that machine guns, which have been “illegal for decades…[have] returned to the streets of Maryland” due to “illegally modified” Glock pistols, and that the “illegal conversion of [these] pistols to fully automatic fire has become rampant and continues to severely and negatively impact public safety in Baltimore, elsewhere in Maryland, and across the United States.” Bypassing logic and legal liability principles – even as the complaint expressly concedes that machine guns and these modifications are already illegal – the plaintiffs insist that “Glock bears legal responsibility for its role in this escalating public health and safety crisis.”
Now, research by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) suggests how overblown and tenuous these claims actually are.
The CPRC found “no evidence that law-abiding gun owners are converting their handguns,” as “even the advocates for these laws focus on only the threat by criminal gangs.” Criminals are clearly unfazed by the fact that conversion devices are already considered “machineguns” under federal law and are generally illegal to make, transfer or possess even without being affixed to a gun, or that many state laws also prohibit the manufacture and transfer of conversion devices enabling automatic firing.
Based on “an exhaustive search on cases where a Glock-style gun with a switch was used to murder people,” the CPRC tallied a total of 43 murders committed in 20 attacks (slightly more than two people murdered per case) over a five-year period starting in 2021. The researchers acknowledge the possibility that not all cases may have made it into their count, but even so, 43 murders represent only 0.05% of all murders committed in that period. The figure shrinks into further insignificance when compared to the 6,147 murders committed with knives or other cutting instruments in the same timeframe.
Of course, the potential for a firearm to be illegally used by a criminal does not, standing alone, remove that arm from the Second Amendment’s protection. But it’s notable that gun control advocates’ priority gun bans – of AR-15s and similar semi-automatic long guns and Glocks and similar semi-automatic handguns – are focusing not only on the most popular guns in their categories among law abiding people but on guns that are not especially prone to fatal misuse.
In any case, whatever scary or misleading lingo politicians employ to justify these gun bans, it’s just so much noise if criminals who illegally modify guns aren’t actually prosecuted. On May 30, for instance, St. Louis, Missouri police “detained two people in [a recklessly-operated] vehicle and found several guns that had been modified with auto-sear switches, converting them to fully automatic firearms.” The police department publicized the arrests, saying the city was “safer today because of the proactive work of these detectives, which led to dangerous weapons being removed from the streets.”
Nevertheless, the dangerous individuals themselves were reportedly and inexplicably back on the streets, having been “released after the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office declined to press charges.” Perhaps there’s more to the story than initially reported, but one can’t help but notice the irony of the message emblazoned across the top of the Circuit Attorney’s official webpage reading, “We Pursue Justice to Achieve a Higher Level of Public Safety for the St. Louis Community.”
As public officials dither over prosecutions and enact laws to make illegal items “extra illegal,” your NRA continues to fight to protect the rights of responsible gun owners and has already filed a lawsuit challenging Maryland’s ban on Glock and Glock-style handguns as unconstitutional and is seeking to enjoin its enforcement.
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