States May Be Banning Full-Auto Switches, But Evidence Shows Bans Won’t Work

Full-auto switches, often called “Glock switches” because that’s where they tend to end up, have always been illegal in this country. The National Firearms Act restricted them before they were ever created, and the 1986 Machine Gun Ban prohibited them since they weren’t even in existence yet.

So if gun control works as advertised, there never should have been any kind of a problem with them.

Unfortunately, states are undertaking bans left and right these days because they’re apparently a huge problem.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed an auto sear ban into law in February as part of a broader public safety package. New Jersey could become the 27th state to enact a ban, after its General Assembly approved the measure in late March.

Other states — including Virginia and deeply conservative Mississippi — also have recently enacted bans. In GOP-led Tennessee, lawmakers are considering a similar measure, but the bill is still in committee and is unlikely to pass before the legislature adjourns on April 25.

“It’s a big deal to talk about places like Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Indiana putting these laws on their books,” Monisha Henley, the senior vice president for governmental affairs at the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, told Stateline. “There is a general consensus that we don’t want a switch or device or auto sear to be able to attach to a firearm and turn into a weapon or war.”

Recovered at crime scenes

The bans on auto sears are a response to a sharp nationwide increase in the number of modified firearms being recovered at crime scenes.

In 2023, law enforcement agencies recovered 4,530 machine gun conversion devices, or auto sears, at crime scenes across the country, according to the latest annual data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF.

Now, while the article seems to focus on the devices and the states taking steps to address them–and the states that didn’t–the truth is that the fact that this is any kind of an issue suggests that new laws won’t do a damn thing.

For one thing, when you look at the total number of crime scenes involving guns in any way, 4,530 isn’t a drop in the proverbial bucket. It’s not the biggest issue out there.

But, in fairness, these represent a massive increase in firepower for any gang-banger who gets hold of one, making them more of a menace than they might otherwise be, so I get it.

Still, there aren’t a bunch of legal full-auto switches out there that criminals are trading back and forth. They’re pretty much all illegal, and yet street-level crooks are getting these with relative ease despite federal regulations prohibiting the act.

States are passing laws not because they’ll reduce the switches so much as it’ll let them prosecute criminals because the feds might not.

But the laws still won’t stop them.

Meanwhile, folks like you and me might end up face-to-face with one of these punks with one of these devices on his gun, and we’re not going to have an easy time defending ourselves because the government thinks of us as the problem.

Gun laws don’t stop bad people. They never have.

New laws won’t stop them either. They never will.