I can walk into a gun store and pick up any number of firearms lawfully. I have to jump through all the hoops and whatnot, but if the store has something I want, I can buy a lot of various firearms. What I can’t do that with, though, is anything full-auto.

While it’s possible to get a machine gun lawfully, it’s both difficult and expensive. You could buy a house for what some of these weapons go for, and that’s only after you’ve jumped through all the hoops to be granted permission to buy one…assuming you live somewhere that you can.

But the feds are increasingly concerned over garden-variety criminals who are turning their Glocks into machine guns.

Investigators have seen more of a small switch that turns handguns into full-automatic machine guns.

It’s called a machine gun conversion device but its street name is “the switch.” Agents with the New Orleans Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) said the device gives handguns the ability to shoot 1,100 rounds per minute.

“In Houston, they’ve seen a lot of recoveries there,” ATF Special Agent Tony Pierce said. “It seems like it’s making its way in this direction.”

The switches travel illegally in two ways. They can either be 3D printed or shipped overseas.

“If not daily, every week, we see them coming in out of Asia,” Assistant Area Port Director for the Port Authority of Memphis Benjamin Canfield said. “It’s something our officers know to be on the lookout for.”

Now, understand that while we’ve constantly been told that our lawful gun market is why criminals get guns, these are devices that are highly illegal in this and pretty much every other country in the developed world.

There’s no lawful market for these kinds of things. None.

So tell me, how has all that gun control worked out?

As it stands, it’s not just law enforcement that’s outgunned by these criminals. It’s folks like you and me who are left unable to match the kind of full-auto firepower these criminals have. Yeah, I may have 15 rounds in my Glock 19, but they have as many, if not more, and can send them downrange a whole lot faster than I can.

And I’m not exactly known for a slow rate of fire.

The gun control laws meant to keep these kinds of weapons out of the hands of criminals have failed. Not only that, but they never actually worked in the first place.

While the technology that allows these weapons to exist is new, criminals have long had access to machine guns. Full-auto is forbidden to them, but they got it anyway.

Well, it’s past time we re-evaluate laws like this.

The truth is that criminals will do what they want regardless of the law. Further, the existence of things like the internet and 3D printers has made any potential gun control efforts meaningless as well.

Then again, this is to be expected. In their hurry to do something about criminals, they forgot that the Second Amendment preserves the right to keep and bear arms…all arms. That includes full-auto weapons as well.

So they’ve denied us certain weapons because we apparently can’t be trusted with them, but criminals not just keep getting them but are now able to modify them all on their lonesome.

Sure. That makes about as much sense as a football bat, but what else do you expect from the gun control side?