crimes by migrants, or shoplifting, or tax evasion. It is this.
Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
“Police officers are facing down fully automatic weapon fire in amounts that haven’t existed in this country since the days of Al Capone and the Tommy gun,” said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. “It’s a huge problem.”
The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
Meanwhile, a challenge to the (previous POTUS) ban on “bump stocks”, enacted after the Vegas mass shooting, is before the SCOTUS.
Occurs to me that a court that likes to make broad decisions could find than any restriction on type of firearms could be ruled “unconstitutional”. iirc, some years ago, a city tried to ban handguns, and SCOTUS ruled that a particular class of firearm cannot be banned. If so, where does that leave the prohibition era ban on machine guns?
There is a very simple solution to this, but unfortunately we lack the will.
All we have to do is reverse the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which gives unprecedented immunity to gun manufacturers and sellers.