A Rapidly Tilting Playing Field – Gangs vs Cops

 

It’s bad enough that many of the uniformed January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, on the other side of the Ellipse metal detectors, were well-armed, caches of AR-15s in nearby vehicles – guns which they believed could legitimately be used, if asked, to force Donald Trump back into the presidency – but criminals of all sorts are embracing readily available tech upgrades that can turn their pistols and assault rifles into fully-automatic machine guns. Our misguided, and I believe constitutionally incorrect, judicial unleashing of guns as “normal citizens’” righteous property has not only fomented a ramp up in shootings (now the number one killer of children and teens) but placed our police officers at exceptional risk. Simply put, cops are very often outgunned and face risks that they have not faced since gangsters with Tommy guns in the 1920s and 30s.

Beyond unregistered ghost guns, which are growing number as 3D printers can easily replicate the necessary parts, very available “conversion” kits can turn a large magazine modern handgun or semiautomatic assault rifle, both of which are almost as easy to buy in most red states as a carton of milk, into a rapid-fire machine gun. Lindsay Whitehurst, writing for the March 12th Associated Press, explains: “Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by an increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online.

“Laws against machine guns date from the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears [pictured above] and chips has allowed people to transform legal semiautomatic 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 in the Tommy gun,’ said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ‘It’s a huge problem.’… The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments from 2017 to 2021, the most recent data available.

“Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead in a Sacramento bar district in 2022. In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities such as Indianapolis, police have seized them every week.

“The devices that can convert legal semiautomatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install… Once in place, they modify the gun’s machinery. Instead of firing one round each time the shooter squeezes the trigger, a semiautomatic weapon with a conversion device starts firing as soon as the trigger goes down and doesn’t stop until the shooter lets go or the weapon runs out of ammunition… ‘You’re seeing them a lot in stunning numbers, particularly in street violence,’ said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center.

“In a demonstration by ATF agents, the firing of a semiautomatic outfitted with a conversion device was nearly indistinguishable from that of an automatic weapon. Conversion devices with differing designs can fit a range of guns, enabling guns to fire at a rate of 800 or more bullets per minute, according to the ATF… ‘It takes two or three seconds to put ... some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,’ Dettelbach said… From 2012 to 2016, police departments in the U.S. found 814 conversion devices and sent them to the ATF. That number grew to more than 5,400 from 2017 to 2021, according to the agency’s most recent data...

“Though the devices are considered illegal machine guns under federal law, many states don’t have their own specific laws against them. In Indiana, police were finding them so often — multiple times a week in the state’s capital — that the state changed the law to ensure it included switches… ‘We have to update the laws regarding machine guns to deal with the problems of today,’ Indianapolis Police Chief Chris Bailey said… Only 15 states have their own laws against the possession, sale or manufacture of automatic-fire weapons, according to Giffords. Indiana was one of many states that have regulations with exceptions. Five states have no state-level machine-gun regulations at all.

“But long before any prosecution, police have to find the conversion devices, often about the size of a quarter… Dettelbach recalled visiting a Texas police department after an ATF training on the devices. Afterward, the chief searched the weapons in the evidence room and found several with previously undetected conversion devices. ‘These items don’t always look as dangerous as they are,’ he said. ‘If you see some of them, they’re pieces of plastic and metal, and sometimes it’s even hard to recognize them when they’re actually on or in the firearm because they blend in.’”

In its rulings, effectively allowing ubiquitous gun ownership with very few controls, the Supreme Court has been the champion of armed gangs, a brisk market in smuggled American arms that have empowered those horrific south-of-the-border cartels and the US gangs that ply their product here, and a mounting death toll that writhes without common sense or the slightest moral justification. Read the Second Amendment sometime and ask yourself if anything in the plainest language of that 1789 Constitutional amendment supports a fundamental right of citizens to own and even openly carry military grade semiautomatic firearms. But somehow, the US Supreme Court does, expressed for the first time in hundreds of years in 2008 and years following. Has the Supreme Court become a dedicated body of rogue, black-robed cop killers?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am at a loss how the highest court in the land holds the right to own and use such assault weapons – designed primarily to kill lots of human beings in the shortest time possible – to be more valuable than the lives of American children.