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Illegal homemade machine guns help fuel gun violence in the US
Known as Glock switches, auto sears, chips or other nicknames, conversion devices can now be made on a 3D printer or ordered from overseas online.
WASHINGTON — Eleven-year-old Domonic Davis was not far from his mom’s Cincinnati home when a hail of gunfire sprayed out from a passing car. Nearly two dozen rounds hurtled through the night at a group of children in the blink of an eye.
Four other children and a woman were hurt in the November shooting that killed Domonic, who had just made his school basketball team.
“What happened? How does this happen to an 11-year-old? He was only a few doors down,” his father, Issac Davis, said.
The shooting remains under investigation. But federal investigators believe the 22 shots could be fired off with lightning speed because the weapon had been illegally converted to fire like a machine gun.
Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
“Police officers are facing down fully automatic weapon fire in amounts that haven’t existed in this country since the days of Al Capone in the Tommy gun,” said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. “It’s a huge problem.”
The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California, in 2022. In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities such as Indianapolis, police have seized them every week.
The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install.
Once in place, they modify the gun’s machinery. Instead of firing one round each time the shooter squeezes the trigger, a semi-automatic weapon with a conversion device starts firing as soon as the trigger goes down and doesn’t stop until the shooter lets go or the weapon runs out of ammunition.
“You’re seeing them a lot in stunning numbers, particularly in street violence,” said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center.
In a demonstration by ATF agents, the firing of a semi-automatic outfitted with a conversion device was nearly indistinguishable from an automatic weapon. Conversion devices with differing designs can fit a range of different guns, enabling guns to fire at a rate of 800 or more bullets per minute, according to the ATF.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Dettelbach said.
Between 2012 and 2016, police departments in the U.S. found 814 conversion devices and sent them to the ATF. That number grew to more than 5,400 between 2017 and 2021, according to the agency’s most recent data.
They took hold in Minneapolis in 2021, and helped fuel record-breaking gun violence that year, said police Chief Brian O’Hara. Along with spraying out bullets at a dizzying speed, switches make a gun much more difficult for the shooter to control, so more people can be hit by accident.
“The thing is shaking as it’s firing, so we wind up getting multiple victims, people hit in extremities during the same shooting incident, because the person cannot control the weapon,” O’Hara said.
The city has seen a decline in their use since the September 2022 arrest of a man charged with selling switches that he had ordered from Russia and Taiwan or made himself, O’Hara said. But “it’s still a very, very real problem,” he said. “This is having a really deep impact on families, on neighborhoods and communities.”
While the devices are considered illegal machine guns under federal law, many states don’t have their own specific laws against them. In Indiana, police were finding them so often — multiple times a week in the state’s capital — that the state changed the law to ensure it included switches.
“We have to update the laws regarding machine guns to deal with the problems of today,” Indianapolis police Chief Chris Bailey said.
Only 15 states have their own laws against the possession, sale or manufacture of automatic-fire weapons, according to Giffords. Indiana was one of many states that have regulations with exceptions. Five states have no state-level machine-gun regulations at all.
But long before any prosecution, police have to find the conversion devices. Often about the size of a quarter, they can easily go unnoticed by the untrained eye after being installed, said Dettelbach.
He recalled visiting a Texas police department after the ATF hosted a training on conversion devices. Afterwards, the chief searched the weapons in the evidence room and found several with previously undetected conversion devices.
“These items don’t always look as dangerous as they are,” he said. “If you see some of them, they’re pieces of plastic and metal, and sometimes it’s even hard to recognize them when they’re actually on or in the firearm because they blend in.”
They’re also increasingly a fixture online, in social media and rap lyrics, Davis said. “Everyone is talking about switches,” he said. “It’s a scary trend.”
Davis struggles to talk about the loss of his son. Domonic would often come with his dad on Fridays to get a haircut at the barber shop where Issac Davis works. The shooting also fell on a Friday, making the end of the week an especially tough time.
Davis hopes to start a foundation called For Every Eleven to fight gun violence and honor his son’s memory.
“I still want to keep his name going,” he said. “He deserved to be still relevant. So I have to keep going. No matter how much grief I grieve him in private.”
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Local mom of two Kirsten Coder didn’t let her cancer diagnosis stop her in her tracks, she got through it all with help from others and places like Hope Chest.
ORONO, Minn. — The three words “You have cancer” are life-changing.
“It was devastating,” said Kirsten Coder, a Twin Cities mom of two. “It was like my world just fell out from under me.”
Kirsten Coder’s mom was the first in their family to have breast cancer.
“They got her right into chemo like essentially like after finding out she had cancer cause it was very aggressive and it worked and um we’re really thankful for that and she had the full meal deal,” Coder shared. “We call it the double mastectomy of chemo and radiation and she’s still here today and cancer-free.”
Her mom was cancer-free, but little did Kirsten know her own battle with cancer was about to begin.
“I started screening, they wanted me to at 10 years before my mom’s diagnosis and that put me at 39 and I’d had a, a lump for a number of years that was bothering me,” Coder said.
Despite so many unknowns coming with a breast cancer diagnosis, the hardest part for Kirsten was telling her daughters.
“My girls knew something was wrong because I just told them I had something that was hurting me that I just needed to get figured out what it was, and my girls knew before I even told them that it was something,” Coder said.
“I said, ‘This is big guys’ and before I even said the words, they said, ‘Mom, God’s gotten us through some pretty hard things already in our life and we know God’s gonna get us through this too.’ I knew right then that we were gonna be ok.”
Kirsten was thankful she was in the early stages, soon undergoing a bilateral mastectomy, chemo and radiation. She says finding a support system and not being afraid to ask for help from organizations like Hope Chest for Breast Cancer made a huge difference.
“I first learned of Hope Chest in around 2009 when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer,” said Coder. “She said did you know there’s a store you can go shop and the proceeds go towards helping women with breast cancer and I thought, let’s check it out.”
A percentage of every item sold at the resale store in Orono goes towards helping families like Kirsten’s in the breast cancer community.
“We help with rent, mortgage groceries, auto-related expenses, daycare and we are seeing more unique needs come through for the patients,” said Hope Chest Executive Director Maureen Scallen Failor.
Failor says Hope Chest has been doing incredible things since its inception in 2001. To date, they have shared over $2.9 million in patient grants, which has served over 6,000 patients.
“It was like kind of a surprise after surprise along the way and I’m self-employed and I don’t have sick time,” said Coder. “I had to take time off work to recover from these things and take care of my kids too. That’s why I’m so thankful for hope chest.”
Local mom of two Kirsten Coder didn’t let her cancer diagnosis stop her in her tracks, she got through it all with help from others and places like Hope Chest.
ORONO, Minn. — The three words “You have cancer” are life-changing.
“It was devastating,” said Kirsten Coder, a Twin Cities mom of two. “It was like my world just fell out from under me.”
Kirsten Coder’s mom was the first in their family to have breast cancer.
“They got her right into chemo like essentially like after finding out she had cancer cause it was very aggressive and it worked and um we’re really thankful for that and she had the full meal deal,” Coder shared. “We call it the double mastectomy of chemo and radiation and she’s still here today and cancer-free.”
Her mom was cancer-free, but little did Kirsten know her own battle with cancer was about to begin.
“I started screening, they wanted me to at 10 years before my mom’s diagnosis and that put me at 39 and I’d had a, a lump for a number of years that was bothering me,” Coder said.
Despite so many unknowns coming with a breast cancer diagnosis, the hardest part for Kirsten was telling her daughters.
“My girls knew something was wrong because I just told them I had something that was hurting me that I just needed to get figured out what it was, and my girls knew before I even told them that it was something,” Coder said.
“I said, ‘This is big guys’ and before I even said the words, they said, ‘Mom, God’s gotten us through some pretty hard things already in our life and we know God’s gonna get us through this too.’ I knew right then that we were gonna be ok.”
Kirsten was thankful she was in the early stages, soon undergoing a bilateral mastectomy, chemo and radiation. She says finding a support system and not being afraid to ask for help from organizations like Hope Chest for Breast Cancer made a huge difference.
“I first learned of Hope Chest in around 2009 when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer,” said Coder. “She said did you know there’s a store you can go shop and the proceeds go towards helping women with breast cancer and I thought, let’s check it out.”
A percentage of every item sold at the resale store in Orono goes towards helping families like Kirsten’s in the breast cancer community.
“We help with rent, mortgage groceries, auto-related expenses, daycare and we are seeing more unique needs come through for the patients,” said Hope Chest Executive Director Maureen Scallen Failor.
Failor says Hope Chest has been doing incredible things since its inception in 2001. To date, they have shared over $2.9 million in patient grants, which has served over 6,000 patients.
“It was like kind of a surprise after surprise along the way and I’m self-employed and I don’t have sick time,” said Coder. “I had to take time off work to recover from these things and take care of my kids too. That’s why I’m so thankful for hope chest.”
Johnson, who played hockey at Hibbing and UMD, died after his neck was cut by an opponent’s skate during a pro game in Sheffield, England.
SHEFFIELD, UK — It’s been one year since the death of American hockey player Adam Johnson, whose neck was fatally cut by an opponent’s skate during a game in Sheffield, England.
A man remains under investigation after being arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Thousands of fans witnessed the grisly collision last Oct. 28 and there’s video of it but authorities have not announced a decision about whether they will bring charges.
There could be a variety of explanations, from delays in digital forensic analyses to weighing the potential difficulty in proving criminality for “on-the-ball” incidents like this one.
Johnson and the Nottingham Panthers were playing the Sheffield Steelers in the Elite Ice Hockey League’s cup competition. The Steelers were leading 2-1 in the second period. Johnson, a forward who briefly played for the Pittsburgh Penguins, skated with the puck into Sheffield’s defensive zone. As he pivoted to move inside, Steelers defenseman Matt Petgrave was skating toward him. Petgrave had another Panthers player in front of him and appeared to have made contact. Then, Petgrave’s left skate elevated as the defenseman began to fall and the blade hit Johnson in the neck.
Johnson, a Minnesota native who was 29, was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The Panthers had described it as a “freak accident.” On Nov. 14, South Yorkshire Police arrested a man but have not released his name or age. The man was released on bail the next day and has been “ re-bailed ” several times — a formality while the investigation continues. In the British system, an arrest signals the start of an investigation — a decision on charges would come afterward.
Police try to determine the “state of mind” of defendants. Besides conducting interviews, that likely means examining phones or computers — and that’s time consuming, even when defendants give passwords, which they’re not obligated to do.
“There are massive delays in the British criminal justice system. Cases are taking a long time to be brought to charge,” criminal defense lawyer Quentin Hunt told The Associated Press.
A report published less than two years ago said there was a backlog of 25,000 devices waiting to be examined.
“My cases are regularly being delayed by up to a year because of delays in getting back digital analyses of devices,” Hunt said. “It is notorious within the British justice system, why cases are taking longer to be brought to a charging decision.”
Lawyers point to a 2004 court ruling that overturned the “grievous bodily harm” conviction of an amateur soccer player who seriously injured an opponent with an on-the-ball tackle. It said criminal prosecution should be reserved for conduct that is “sufficiently grave.”
In deciding if conduct reaches the criminal threshold “it has to be borne in mind that, in highly competitive sports, conduct outside the rules can be expected to occur in the heat of the moment,” the ruling added. “The type of sport, the level at which it is played, the nature of the act, the degree of force used, the extent of the risk of injury, the state of mind of the defendant are all likely to be relevant in determining whether the defendant’s actions go beyond the threshold.”
Prosecutions have been more common in “off-the-ball” scenarios such us punching, biting or head-butting.
An “on-the-ball” case that involved a rugby player being left partially paralyzed was handled in civil court. Natasha King wasn’t criminally charged despite dropping her body weight onto Dani Czernuszka-Watts, who was in a vulnerable position as she was about to pick up the ball in a 2017 match.
Czernuszka-Watts won her civil suit in which a former referee testified after watching video of the game that in his 60 years in rugby he had “never witnessed such a reckless incident.” The civil court judge had found that King had acted out of revenge built up from earlier in the match.
“Against those hallmarks, the fact that the incident would likely be considered ‘on the ball’ may have saved the injuring player from concurrent criminal prosecution,” attorney Henry Goldschmidt wrote in his analysis of criminal liability in sports.
Petgrave’s collision with Johnson was clearly “on the ball” because Johnson had the puck on his stick.
An incident in a hockey game in December 1995 led to a grievous bodily harm charge against Nicky Chinn, who played for the Steelers and was accused of purposely using his stick to injure an opponent’s eye. A jury found him not guilty.
The case is likely an involuntary manslaughter investigation in which “there has to be an unlawful act or negligence,” Hunt said, but prosecutors wouldn’t need to prove the intent to kill or cause serious bodily harm.
Gross negligence manslaughter is still involuntary but more complicated: “You owe a duty of care to someone else, and you are negligent in conduct and that gives rise to death due to your negligence,” Hunt added.
Voluntary manslaughter is more akin to a murder charge with clear intent to kill. The fact that Johnson wasn’t wearing a neck guard could prove legally significant.
“Given that it’s not up to him (the man under arrest) as to whether the other player wore a neck guard or not, then it will be, I imagine, quite difficult for the prosecution to prove to the requisite standard that he should be held criminally accountable,” Hunt said.
A week before an arrest was made, South Yorkshire coroner Tanyka Rawden issued a “ Prevention of Future Deaths ” report urging that neck guards be mandatory for all hockey players.
“In due course the inquest will consider whether the use of a neck guard or protector could have prevented Mr Johnson’s death. At this stage in my investigation however, I am sufficiently concerned that deaths may occur in the future if neck guards or protectors are not worn,” Rawden wrote.
The coroner’s inquest was suspended in January, a procedural move because the police investigation was ongoing.
There has been debate about player protections. Britain’s top league made neck guards mandatory last Jan. 1, two months after Johnson’s death.
The next key date is Nov. 11, when the man who was arrested would need to be re-bailed again. Petgrave, a 32-year-old Canadian, has not made any public statements and his agent declined to comment. Police have also declined to comment.
Teams around the league began recognizing the one-year mark by holding 47 seconds of applause before games this weekend.
The Panthers plan to hold a jersey retirement ceremony for Johnson’s No. 47 on Dec. 14.
