Mississippi TV Station Falsely Claims Forced Reset Triggers Causing 'Chaos'

Let's start with the headline: "FRTs are triggering chaos in Mississippi." Based on that, you'd think that FRTs are showing up at crime scenes in large numbers, right? Yet this is the very last line in WLBT's story:

To date, there have been no reported crimes committed in the state of Mississippi with a firearm fitted with a forced reset trigger and, once again, the devices are legal to own.

How can something that's not been involved in a single crime in the state be "triggering chaos"? This is the epitome of fake news; an attempt to create a controversy where none exists. 

The premise of WLBT's sensationalist report is that FRT's might start showing up at crime scenes because the devices could be attractive to criminals who want to increase their guns rate of fire. The piece starts out by talking about switches, devices that are illegal under both state and federal law, before awkwardly segueing into the Department of Justice's settlement with Rare Breed Triggers over its FRTs; a settlement reached after a federal judge issued an injunction against the ATF's rule treating FRTs as machine guns. 

After a brief demonstration of how FRTs work, the station then shared a couple of nonsensical soundbites from local law enforcement.

“We will be tremendously impacted by that legislation, but more importantly and on that same stratosphere, that same level, law enforcement is going to be outgunned,“ Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said. 

Wade admitted he is concerned about FRTs.

Chief Wade said, “I say this because, just two days ago, I had six guns on that table that were confiscated during an arrest in South Jackson. Out of those six, four had Glock switches on them. Four had Glock switches on them,” Wade emphasized. “And when you talk about the forced reset trigger, it’s a little different from the Glock switch, but it is designed in a way where still you will have rapid fire.”

So, police are still confiscating guns with illegal switches, which makes Wade concerned that criminals will, for some reason, start to use firearms with FRTs installed instead, even though they're much more complicated to install? Why would they do that when they can just use a plastic switch they can get for $20 from China or make using a 3D printer? 

And Wade isn’t the only Mississippi law enforcement official concerned about FRTs.

In June, Prentiss Police Chief Richard Browning attended the Mississippi Association of Police Chiefs annual conference in Biloxi, Mississippi.

According to Browning, he said the subject of FRTs did come up.

“Unfortunately, it is legal and I agree it should be legal, but that’s what our government says,” Browning said. “It falls under non-class-three fully-automatic, but it worries me that that’s available to anyone.”

“The difference between a Glock switch and the forced reset is the Glock switch, you can see it. Part of the Glock switch is the exterior of the weapon or the handgun, where these drop-ins, they’re all internal. We won’t know that it is an internal forced reset trigger or binary trigger until we seize the weapon, take it apart, and look,” Browning said.

In most circumstances police aren't not going to know if a gun has been equipped with a switch until they seize and examine the firearm either, unless they have really good eyes. Most criminals aren't openly carrying their firearms to begin with, and if a bad guy is pointing a pistol at a police officer the rear of the handgun isn't going to be visible to their intended target. 

Chief Joseph Wade said, “I am absolutely for the Second Amendment - the constitutional right to bear arms,” Wade said. “I fully support that. But, when you talk about adding all this extra firepower: Why? What are we hunting? Elephants?”

FRTs don't add "extra firepower". Wade makes it seem like installing an FRT turns a 9mm into a .50 caliber, when all it does is potentially increase the rate of fire (depending on the skill of the user). 

While WLBT mentioned the DOJ's settlement with Rare Breed Triggers, they also neglected to include some critically important pieces of information. From NRA's assessment of the settlement:

Critically, the government agrees in the settlement,

not to enforce 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) and the requirements of the National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act of 1968 as amended by the Hughes Amendment to the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, or any similar statute or agency interpretation of 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b) under which an FRT is contended to be a “machinegun” or otherwise unlawful against any person or organization for possessing or transferring FRTs … .

But this concession is subject to two important qualifications. The first is that the FRT operates as described by the Northern District of Texas in its decision vacating ATF’s classification of FRTs as machineguns. The second is that the FRT not be designed for use in a handgun, defined for purposes of the agreement as “a firearm whose magazine loads into the trigger-hand grip.”

Rare Breed also agreed to certain conditions on its own continued business in FRTs. One is that “they will not develop or design FRTs for use in any handgun,” as previously defined, nor “market, advertise, or encourage individuals to put FRT triggers on any handgun.“ Additionally, Rare Breed and its officers agree to “take all reasonable efforts” to seek prohibitory injunctions at the company’s own expense under its FRT patent, provided they “have a good faith argument that the device is within the scope of the patent.” Finally, Rare Breed consented “to promote the safe and responsible use of its devices including by displaying such material on its website and other online platforms.”

If the reporter is going to compare FRTs to "Glock switches", shouldn't he at least acknowledge the fact that under the terms of the settlement, FRTs aren't going to be designed to be used in handguns?

That's a fairly minor quibble. The biggest problem with WLBT's report is its claim that FRTs are "triggering chaos" when there's no evidence that a single device has been used in a violent crime in Mississippi; a fact that wasn't disclosed until the final seconds of the station's report. 

There are plenty of real crimes for the station to report on without having to create a controversy where none exists. If FRTs start showing up at crime scenes, then there might be a story. This, though, is just anti-gun scaremongering masquerading as journalism.