GUNSATF Director: Action Needed on Auto Sears Which Are“Flooding Our Communities”
Fully automatic weapons are highly regulated, but the agency has recovered a startling number of machine gun conversion devices in recent years.
Steven Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is calling for immediate action to address a surge in crimes involving auto sears, small devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns.
“This is a problem that needs to be focused on immediately,” Dettelbach said. “These devices are flooding our communities.”
Speaking virtually to the audience of a February 28 gun violence prevention forum in New York City, Dettelbach cited a recent ATF report that found a shocking increase in recoveries of auto sears and other machine gun conversion devices. From 2017 through 2021, the agency recovered 5,454 such devices, a 570 percent increase over the previous five-year period.
The data backs up last year’s reporting from The Trace and VICE News, which found that seauto sears were involved in dozens of shootings by extremists, mass shooters, and drug traffickers. In April 2022, after a gunman armed with a converted Glock handgun opened fire in Sacramento leaving six dead and 12 wounded, a group of more than 40 members of Congress signed a letter urging the ATF to be more explicit about the illegality of the devices.
Machine guns are among the most regulated firearms in the United States. Federal law requires anyone who wishes to purchase a machine gun to go through rigorous screening and register the weapon with the government. And gunmakers have been prohibited from selling new machine guns to civilians for decades, which means the weapons command huge premiums among enthusiasts because of their rarity.
But in recent years, auto sears, also known as Glock switches, have made the machine gun accessible again. The small conversion devices are easily installed on semiautomatic firearms, cheap to purchase, and difficult for law enforcement to detect.
“Congress knew almost 100 years ago, in the days of Al Capone, that fully automatic weapons were unusually dangerous to the public and law enforcement,” Dettelbach said. “They have no place in our communities.” Unlike a semiautomatic gun, which fires one cartridge with each trigger pull, a fully automatic weapon can fire up to 20 rounds per second until the trigger is released or it runs out of ammo.
“Let me be clear: Making, selling, and just having these kinds of machine gun conversion devices is against the law,” he added.
