Politics
Illinois Lawmakers Seek to Outlaw Handguns That Are Able to Be Converted Into ‘Machine Guns’
A converted firearm. (Photo courtesy Everytown for Gun Safety)
Illinois legislators are pushing a bill they say would close a “loophole” by outlawing the sale of certain handguns that can be turned into fully-automatic firearms through the use of a 3D-printed switch.
The Responsible Gun Manufacturers Act, versions of which have been introduced into both the Illinois House and Senate, would prohibit the manufacturing and sale of pistols that can be easily converted into illegal “machine guns.”
“They may belong on our battlefields,” Illinois state Rep. Justin Slaughter, one of the bill sponsors, said on a press call Thursday, “but they certainly do not belong in our neighborhoods, in our communities.”
The bill doesn’t specifically name gun manufacturer Glock, but its firearms — as well as other brands with similar models — are among the most susceptible to being converted through the use of an auto sear, a cheap, small device commonly known as a “Glock switch.”
Greg Lickenbrock, a firearms expert with the violence prevention nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, said those switches can be created using a 3D printer and easily snap onto the back of certain handguns, allowing them to fire up to 20 rounds per second.
That violates the Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law in 2023 to hold gun companies accountable for conduct that endangers the public, according to a previous lawsuit brought against Glock by the city of Chicago in 2024.
According to Everytown, Chicago has seen a 15-fold increase in machine gun conversion device recoveries since 2019, with more than 1,100 modified Glocks recovered between 2021 and 2023 alone.
Edward M. Barksdale Jr., a pediatric surgeon and University of Chicago professor, said that these types of converted firearms have changed the “clinical reality” doctors face when trying to save gunshot victims.
“It is no longer common for us to treat a single gunshot wound,” he said. “We see children who arrive with injuries that require multiple major operations … This is not anecdotal, this is a pattern and what we’re treating today is not a single injury, it is a cascade of events.”
According to Lickenbrock, the vast majority of commercially available handguns aren’t able to be converted. Chicago’s lawsuit alleged Glock could prevent its firearms from being modified into machine guns, “but refuses to do so.”
Late last year, Glock released a new model of firearm to replace those that had been among the most easily convertible, but according to Lickenbrock, Glock hasn’t publicly stated that it did so in order to prevent the use of switches.
Lickenbrock said he’s also taken apart one of those new models and that he was able to remove a metal tab that prevents the use of a switch in under two seconds.
“So in our minds, Glock has not gone far enough to fix the problem,” he said Thursday, “and I would be happy to see another edition if Glock were able to come up with one that could fix this problem.”
