At first glance, the executive order signed by Joe Biden on Thursday establishing an "emerging firearm threats task force" doesn't seem to do all that much. The task force is supposed to put together a report within 90 days on home-built firearms, as well as an "inter-agency plan" to combat the use of switches that allow for semi-automatic firearms to empty a magazine with one pull of the trigger. But given that these switches are already illegal under federal law, there's a very good chance that the task force will recommend going after the semi-automatic firearms that can accept the switches, not just the switches themselves.
This is something that gun control groups have been quietly demanding for several years. In 2022, the Everytown-funded website The Trace suggested that the ATF could reclassify Glocks and other semi-automatic firearms capable of accepting an illegal switch as machine guns and labeling them "restricted" items under the National Firearms Act.
In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, law enforcement agencies started recovering huge numbers of converted RPB Industries SM10 pistols. The popular semiautomatic pistol was a near-perfect replica of the Mac-10 submachine gun, and by shaving down a small internal component with a steel file, it could be modified to fire on fully automatic. At nearly a quarter of the price, it became a hot commodity among drug traffickers.
Law enforcement recovered at least a thousand of the machine guns in crimes across the nation by 1980. That same year, the ATF linked 60 of the guns to drug related murders in Florida alone.
To curb the proliferation of these military-grade weapons, the ATF took an unprecedented step. It reclassified a handful of easily converted semiautomatic pistols and rifles as machine guns. The ruling legally grandfathered the weapons already in circulation, but forced an ultimatum on their makers: Redesign future iterations to be less susceptible to automatic conversion or face selling them under the strict regulations of the National Firearms Act.
Many Democrats say that it’s well within the power of the agency to apply this same strategy to curb the proliferation of modern-day auto sears, like Glock switches, though Luettke and other firearm experts contacted for this story told The Trace that doing so would mean having to regulate dozens of other similarly easy-to-convert handguns.
“A Glock is the most popular handgun in the United States. I think the ATF should explore, as they have in the past, using their regulatory measures to force companies to change their designs or face stricter classifications,” said Representative Eric Swalwell a Democrat from California, who also signed the April letter.
More recently, the city of Chicago (with the help of Everytown Law) has sued Glock and is seeking an injunction halting the sale of Glock pistols to Chicago residents, claiming that the guns are "readily convertible" to full-auto fire and that the company refuses to change its design to block the use of the illegal devices.
According to the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, the city's first lawsuit was filed just days after White House officials met privately with Glock to demand the company change its design.
On the very day the suit was filed, Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt tweeted “Federal officials recently contacted Glock to discuss implementing new ways to modify Glock pistols to make it harder for Glock switches to be installed. Rather than help, Glock falsely insisted there is nothing they can do.”
“Because this was a private meeting between Glock and the White House, Mr. Feinblatt seemed to have inside access to the White House meeting which raises questions about collusion with your Office. And rather than aggressively prosecuting criminals, government agencies are colluding with anti-gun interest groups to cripple a manufacturer who sells a legal product in a highly regulated sales market,” continued Chairman [James] Comer.
Retired ATF Deputy Assistant Director Pete Forcelli has also told Bearing Arms that the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention had tried to get current ATF Director Steve Dettelbach to start the process of reclassifying Glocks as machine guns earlier this year, but Dettelbach declined to do so.
All of this suggests that the task force established through Biden's most recent executive order is designed to give cover for Kamala Harris to move forward with reclassifying Glocks (and perhaps other semi-automatic firearms) as "machine guns" if she wins election in November. The task force's recommendations aren't due until after Election Day, and I don't think we'll hear Harris call for reclassification on the campaign trail, but given her previous support for an outright ban on handguns while serving as San Francisco's District Attorney it's not a stretch to think that Harris would be eager to adopt what amounts to a ban on some of the most popular pistols on the market today if she's installed in the Oval Office.
Should reporters ask Harris if she supports reclassifying Glocks as machine guns? Absolutely. Will they? Of course not, any more than they're willing to bring up her embrace of handgun bans two decades ago. Right now, the Harris campaign and her allies in the media are all about portraying the candidate as a "moderate" when it comes to gun control, but if she wins the election in November I have a feeling it won't be long before she endorses one of the most extreme suggestions of the gun control lobby: a sweeping ban on some or all semi-automatic handguns, not through a vote of Congress, but through an ATF rule change.
