In an attempt to keep fully automatic guns off the streets, Baltimore and Maryland authorities Wednesday sued Glock, the maker of some of the best-selling handguns in America. The lawsuit demands Glock take steps to prevent its guns from being modified into machine-gun-like weapons capable of firing 120 rounds in one minute.
Small, easily installed devices known as “auto sears” or “switches” that are growing more common have terrified law enforcement because they enable high-powered violence not seen since 1934, when Congress banned machine guns after their prominent use by mobsters.
But police statistics show the number of “modified Glock” shootings is on the rise, including an incident near a Baltimore YMCA in March in which a woman’s car was hit 18 times, and police found 41 shell casings nearby. In Philadelphia last year, eight high school students were shot in one spray, including a 16-year-old who was hit nine times. In Memphis in April, a police officer was killed and two other officers wounded in a firefight with two teenagers, one armed with a modified gun.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, is the first to test Maryland’s new Gun Industry Accountability Act, passed by the General Assembly last year to create liability for gun manufacturers and possibly circumvent an earlier related law. The Maryland lawsuit mirrors others filed in Chicago, Minnesota and New Jersey in recent months.
After a number of suits against gunmakers failed in the early 2000s, including one in Maryland, Congress crafted the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005, which protects gun manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products, though with some exceptions.
One of those exceptions is for a violation of state law concerning the sale or marketing of firearms, which would include Maryland’s new accountability act. Everytown Law, the legal arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, thinks Glock can be held liable because it has known for decades that some of its pistols can be converted to fully automatic fire, “but they’ve made what we think is an unconscionable business decision not to fix the problem,” Everytown attorney Eric Tirschwell said.
“They can be held accountable because that is not reasonable conduct for a gun manufacturer,” Tirschwell said.
Glock lawyers and company officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment. In response to a similar lawsuit filed last year by the city of Chicago, Glock said that it cannot be held liable for the actions of third parties and that the 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers applies in these cases.
“Auto sears for Glock pistols have been around almost as long as the pistols themselves,” attorney Michael L. Rice wrote for Glock in October. Rice noted that Chicago “claims that because certain Glock pistols are illegally modified through the installation of an auto sear, Glock, Inc. has a duty to change the design of the most popular pistol in America to make it more difficult for criminals to illegally modify them.”
Glock, an Austrian company with a U.S. plant in Smyrna, Georgia., does not make the sears, which themselves are considered a machine gun by ATF. But some who make them illegally place Glock’s logo on the back. The devices cost about $20 and can also be made with a 3D printer.
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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) said that Glock’s handguns are particularly easy to convert from semiautomatic, where the trigger must be pulled each time the shooter wants to fire, to automatic, where the trigger can be held down and the gun will fire continuously.
“It’s called the ‘Glock switch’ for a reason,” Scott said, referring to a street term for the sear that “switches” the gun from semiautomatic to fully automatic. “It’s not called the Ruger switch. It’s not the Beretta switch.”
Scott said that Baltimore police had found 50 modified guns in 2023 and that the number doubled to 100 last year. D.C. police have seen the number of “machine gun conversion devices” seized rise from 66 in 2021 to 200 last year, according to ATF spokeswoman Whitney Cruse-King.
The “Glock switch” has eased into popular culture, the lawsuit notes, with frequent references in rap lyrics. A No. 1 hit by Drake with 21 Savage featured the line “This Glock .45 came with a switch.” Baltimore rapper OGJohnGotti issued a song last year with the lyrics “Button on my Glock, went from a standard to an automatic.” A “button” is another term for a sear or switch.
Gun violence “has had a stranglehold on this city,” Scott said. In 2023, a person opened fire on Baltimore officers with a drum-style magazine allowing larger bullet capacity, along with an assault rifle; 33 casings were found near the suspect. Baltimore police said about half of those arrested in modified Glock incidents in the city were under age 21.
Scott said he and other elected leaders sent letters to gun companies, “talking to them about how our city spent money with these companies for our law enforcement. And we just want a conversation about how we can work with them to stop having their weapons end up on the streets of our cities, used for violence.”
What happened? “There was no response. So when you don’t get those responses and you are knocking at the door time and time again over the years, you have to take things to the next level,” he said.
In a 2023 interview with The Washington Post, then-ATF special agent in charge Craig Kailimai said trying to convince Glock to change its ways was tricky.
“Their design is legal,” Kailimai said. “It’s a patented-design weapon, so you’re asking to alter their profitable manufacturing design of a weapon? That probably is not a conversation for an agency that enforces firearms laws.”
Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said in an interview that Glock has been on notice for years that some of its pistols can be converted to automatic, and that it even advertises its automatic capabilities on social media. In a video on YouTube, a Glock rangemaster in Georgia refers to the sear as “the fun switch.” Glock also makes a gun that does not accept the sear, the lawsuit notes, so the company is able to make a gun which can’t be modified.
“Their actions speak louder,” Brown (D) said. “They are not going to accept responsibility for their contribution to the proliferation of illegal machine guns in our communities.” Brown said the 2005 federal law protecting gunmakers’ liability required states to “pass a law that directly ties the negligence of the manufacturer to the harm that you allege.” He believes Maryland’s new law does that and that versions of it in other states have survived challenges so far.
The new Maryland law was sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery), which requires gun dealers and manufacturers to implement “reasonable controls” to prevent access to straw purchasers, gun traffickers and anyone prohibited from possessing a firearm or planning to commit a crime. Waldstreicher said last year that gunmakers and dealers would be susceptible to lawsuits if they don’t take measures to prevent the loss or theft of their products.
“When you stop caring about how your product is being used by bad actors, you are the bad actor,” Waldstreicher said.