On December 12, the Offices of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin announced the filings of separate lawsuits against Glock for endangering residents of both states by allegedly producing pistols that are uniquely easy to convert into illegal machine guns using third-party devices known as “Glock switches.” Easy to 3D-print or purchase online for less than $20, such switches allow Glock-style pistols to fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute. Glock does not manufacture or sell the devices itself.
The lawsuits follow one filed by Chicago and Everytown Law against Glock in March for similar claims. The lawsuit was updated in July and alleges Chicago police recovered over 1,300 pistols fitted with Glock switches from 2021 through May 2024.
CRACKING DOWN ON SWITCHES
Federal law prohibits civilians from owning fully automatic machine guns and the parts used to create them — including Glock switches — manufactured after May 19, 1986. But in recent years, police across the U.S. have recovered thousands of switches and Glock-style pistols converted into machine guns. Converted pistols have also been used in at least a dozen mass shootings, including in Birmingham in September and Tuskegee in November.
Days after the Birmingham mass shooting, the Biden administration announced new measures to crack down on machine gun conversion devices. Earlier that month, authorities seized over 350 websites for allegedly selling Glock switches and silencers imported into the U.S. from China.
In announcing Minnesota’s lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison’s office stated, “Glock has known for nearly 40 years that its semi-automatic handguns can be easily converted into illegal machine guns.” The company “could fix this problem by changing its so-called ‘simple’ handgun design to prevent the easy conversion of legal Glock handguns into illegal machine guns. But not only has Glock not chosen to do so, it has continued to glorify and promote the ‘fun’ of shooting a fully automatic Glock, in full knowledge both that its semi-automatic handguns can be quickly and easily converted into machine guns and that machine guns are illegal in the United States.”
The state’s complaint alleges that Glock has published social media content depicting people firing fully automatic Glocks as part of its marketing.
According to New Jersey Attorney General Platkin’s office, “Glock directly benefits from increased sales because the ease with which its weapons may be easily switched to machine gun mode in a matter of minutes makes them more attractive to certain buyers, particularly those who intend to use the machine guns for criminal activities.”
Both complaints detail a number of shootings that occurred in Minnesota and New Jersey involving Glock switches, and explain why it’s so easy to install them on Glock pistols. Minnesota’s lawsuit also states that Minneapolis experienced 16 incidents of fully automatic gun fire in 2020, with 154 shots fired. But in 2023, the number of incidents rose to 257 with 2,595 shots fired. Both lawsuits allege that Glock violated several state laws and contributed to a public nuisance.
THE NSSF DEFENDS GLOCK
In a statement, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, defended Glock and “denounce[d] the coordinated ‘lawfare’ effort by Democratic state attorneys general to abuse the judicial system through frivolous claims against a firearm manufacturer.”
The NSSF did not mention the victims of shootings involving Glock switches, or steps Glock could take to address the issue of its pistols being so easily converted.
Larry Keane, the NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel, said, “This is clearly an abuse of the courts to attempt to circumvent the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA),” a federal law enacted in 2005 that extended broad legal protections to the gun industry. But the PLCAA does not prevent lawsuits against gun makers and sellers who have violated federal or state laws, or are accused of negligence.
To learn more about the PLCAA — and the National Rifle Association’s behind-the-scenes efforts to enact it — click here.