We've all heard of so-called Glock switches. They're supposedly so prevalent that some states are trying to ban Glocks entirely. Other governments are suing Glock for not changing its proven designs to make these devices unusable.
Every bit of fearmongering about them, following the similar fearmongering over "ghost guns," is yet another way anti-gunners tend to justify various anti-gun efforts.
Yes, that includes the ATF.
In North Texas, a report from CBS News clues us in to what the new anti-gun hotness is about to be.
They're called "swift links," and police across North Texas are finding them tucked inside firearms, converting semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones. It's a similar concept to the "Glock switch," which attaches to the back of a handgun and overrides its firing mechanism.
Under the National Firearms Act, machine gun conversion devices are classified as machine guns, even when not installed, making them illegal.
A recent ATF report showed more than 5,800 conversion devices were seized in 2023 alone, an increase of almost 800% since 2019.
"Right now we feel that we're working our butts off to try to contain the problem, and to get as many of these off the street," said Bennie Mims, the special agent in charge of the ATF Dallas Field Division. "But if we don't stay on top of them, it can really get out of control."
Now, in fairness, 5,800 seized in 2023 is a significant number, so it's pretty clear these are an issue to some degree or another. How much of a problem remains to be seen, in part because we still lack context as to how these were seized. If these were from roughly 5,800 different arrests, then it's a pretty big problem.
If it's from just three, where each person had hundreds and hundreds just sitting around, it might not be as big an issue as it might otherwise appear.
Personally, I think it's a little more likely that there were a whole lot of arrests of varying sizes that yielded these devices.
The issue is that these "swift links" and full-auto switches are being lumped together in nomenclature, and one can't help but notice that this could well lead to a new justification for banning so-called assault weapons.
What it really should do, though, is help people start to recognize that even the National Firearms Act--a law anti-gunners have been claiming for years is proof that gun control works because of how few criminals had machine guns--isn't as effective as people wanted to believe.
If it's not working, it shouldn't be on the books.
There's no reason that I should be forced to only rely on semi-automatic fire when the bad guy I might have to defend myself from can just spray-and-pray. This isn't proof of anything except that the NFA should be repealed so that we, the regular armed citizens of the United States, can meet the threats we're likely to face on something approaching even ground.
And if we're called on to fill the role of "a well regulated militia" that is "necessary to the security of a free state," well, that'll sure as hell come in handy then, too.
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