Law enforcement officials say a gun with an illegal “Glock switch” was used in a mass shooting on Saturday night in Birmingham, Alabama, that left four people dead and another 17 wounded. The shooting took place outside the Hush lounge in the city’s popular Five Points South entertainment district, near the University of Alabama at Birmingham campus.
Police believe the shooting involved multiple gunmen who carried out a “targeted attack” on one person but killed and injured multiple bystanders. As of this writing, no arrests have been made.
dangerous machine guns
“Glock switches,” as they are known, are cheap, third-party devices that illegally convert semi-automatic Glock-style pistols — which fire one shot per trigger pull — into fully automatic machine guns that can continue firing as long as the shooter depresses the trigger and the gun has ammunition. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), it takes less than a minute to install a switch, and converted pistols can fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute.
Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said that over 100 shell casings were recovered from the scene of the shooting — highlighting the deadly rapid-fire capabilities of Glock-style pistols converted into machine guns. The Department of Justice recently unveiled new initiatives to stop the spread of these 3D-printable devices, and authorities seized over 350 websites that were allegedly being used to illegally import Glock switches and silencers from China.
Glock switches have been used in at least two other mass shootings in Alabama. In December 2022, a man armed with a Glock converted into a machine gun fired into a crowd in Mobile, killing one person and wounding another nine people. In April 2023, a mass shooting in Dadeville that left four people dead and 32 others wounded involved at least one converted Glock pistol. The ATF also says that Alabama alone has seen a 1,200-percent increase in Glock switch recoveries.
Other mass shootings involving Glock switches have taken place in:
- Fresno, California, in November 2019
- Sacramento, California, in April 2022
- Chicago, Illinois, in May 2022
- Boston, Massachusetts, in August 2023
- Chicago, Illinois, in October 2023
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in March 2024
- Memphis, Tennessee, in April 2024
- Detroit, Michigan, in June 2024
To learn more about Glock switches and their deadly proliferation, click here.
Calls for Change
Though it’s illegal for civilians to possess Glock switches and other machine gun conversion devices on the federal level, Alabama — unlike its neighbor Mississippi — has not enacted laws that ban machine gun conversion devices and empower state law enforcement agencies to target these illegal accessories.
Earlier this year, the Alabama House of Representatives passed HB 36, a bill that would ban the possession of machine gun conversion devices, but it did not pass the Senate before the legislature adjourned.
After the shooting, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said, “Glock switches are the number one public safety issue in our city and State…Every Mayor, Police Chief, Sheriff, and District Attorney I know wants [G]lock switches outlawed.”