What’s the problem?

Illegal Glock switches found across Tennessee

A Glock switch can turn a normal handgun into a weapon that can “fire 1200 rounds in a minute,” according to special agent Ashley Lightner with the ATF. Officials are finding them all over Tennessee.

At the Memphis Port of U.S. Customs, officials told WSMV that they’ve confiscated 525 Glock switches that have illegally come to Tennessee.

“Oh we’re seeing a bunch in Tennessee,” said Lightner adding that over the past three years there has been an increase in the switches in the State.

A Glock switch can turn a semi-automatic pistol into a weapon with “the power of a machine gun,” according to Lightner

This makes me laugh. If they have confiscated 525 my guess is there are 50K they haven’t confiscated.

I am reminded of a quote by Jeff Cooper:

As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto.

Some personal experience, conversation with full-auto owners, and reading test results all confirm Cooper’s assertion. Hence, I don’t see why they are concerned with full-auto firearms. Other than, of course, it is another opportunity to harass innocent people.

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15 thoughts on “What’s the problem?

  1. I guess the ATF is going out of its way to demonstrate how utterly ignorant they are about firearms.

    • It is not just the ATF. The general public, reporters, and all government spokesmen all seem or are horrified at the thought of full auto. Reality be dammed. That and private arsenals with more than a dozen rounds are just evil. We’ve already lost on these issues.

      • Well, sure. But those other groups are not pretending to be subject matter experts. The initials “ATF” are designed to make people think its minions know what they are doing.

  2. 1-3 seconds of giggle followed by Oh shit I’m out of ammo.
    Not a good way to engage in a gunfight.

  3. “A Glock switch can turn a semi-automatic pistol into a weapon with ‘the power of a machine gun.””
    For the first 17 shots.
    After that?

    • 30 to 50 shots. You can get 30 rd 9mm mags from Glock, and 50 rd drums in the aftermarket.

      Either way, the quote “…1200 rounds in a minute” is of course a lie. It’s what they do; intentionally ignore the difference between “per minute” as a rate, and “in a minute” meaning a total number within a minute.

      These details don’t matter of course, being that a right is a right, and to attack a right under the color of law, or to conspire to deprive a right, is a federal crime. However we can cite these simple details, which anyone can verify on-line within seconds, as a way of showing the perpetual dishonesty which they (the criminal class) exhibit.

  4. A Glock with a happy switch is fun thing at machine gun shoot. But otherwise not very practical, heh, heh.

  5. Um…doesn’t this kind of undermine all their arguments about how they can reduce gun violence just by making more and more things illegal?

    Glock switches are already illegal and they still find and confiscate them regularly.

    It’s almost like criminals don’t obey the laws or something.

    I love this part: “What worries people like Lightner is the possibility of those weapons making their way into the wrong hands.”

    Um…they’re illegal. Criminals are shipping them to other criminals. I’d say that pretty much defines being in “the wrong hands.”

    So, how many arrests have been made? Convictions? Bueller?

  6. 525? Who were they being shipped to? Where were they coming from? Just like the 10,000 AR-15, full-auto conversion kits they busted. (from China). Thats where the story ends. Just like the fentanyl.
    No perp walks? No big showy trials? Full-autos are already illegal. So they want to make a second batch of useless laws? That they will never enforce?
    Other than 14 year old mentality getting a milli-second of emotional rush over the thought of it all. It all goes where?
    On the other hand, the 50,000 that got in are just like the fighting age males no one is talking about, that are coming across our borders right now.
    Are not all the ingredients for the bloodiest of wars being imported, by whom?
    What are we being set up for?
    Methinks more than just a food crisis & monetary reset.
    Maybe total removal from the world stage?
    Methinks also, that were about to be engaged in “Riddicks” favorite game. (Whose the better killer.)

    • We already understand the Fast and Furious gun running scheme well enough. Is this significantly different in terms of desired effect and purpose? Whether our government is sending guns outside our borders to criminals, or bringing switches in to criminals from outside, would make no difference, correct?

      The latter would be just a minor script alteration to the former dog and pony show. And we also know that Hollywood has run out of material, and so they’re just doing variations on all their older works.

  7. Full auto has a legitimate role in suppressive fire, against mass attacks, against moving targets, or from a moving platform, et al. Any time a precision shot is either impractical or unnecessary, while some fire is necessary. Our military uses it, therefore it is most clearly a right as indicated in the second amendment (e.g. US v Miller).

    I suspect this is nothing more that the AFT (sic) making hey so as to bolster their job security by pretending to serve “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). But of course it’s always a concern when our own government seeks to violate the supreme law of our land while issuing press releases and so on, making it a national story. I’d therefore call it flaunting. Flaunting their ability to flout the law. Flaunting flouters. That’s going to look really bad at their sentencing hearings, and so I would recommend to any ATF agent or Bureau employee, even down to the level of janitor and groundskeeper, that they;

    REPENT NOW, AND AVOID THE RUSH!

    Anyway, I suspect that anyone who understands the switch, and has shop skills, could fab one up with relative ease, probably with no more than a lump of metal or polycarbonate and a set of hand files. In that case the number of switches being brought in from overseas by the principalities, the powers, “the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12), would be fairly insignificant. In other words, only the mechanically “dis-inclined” would need to purchase one pre-made.

  8. If you are trained to use it, the Glock-18 can be useful, but it is not a one-handed gun. Well, unless you are maybe the size/weight and strength of Arnold. The maximum burst size I could keep on a full size torso target was six rounds, shooting two handed. Mostly the optimum size was two or three rounds. I think we were shooting at ~15 yards. That was with the 33rnd mag installed, most of the time. Hits start to spread as the mag gets lighter. This was with the original G18, not the newer ones with the barrel porting. I would hazard that the spread would be tighter with the newer guns. Training was to only let it launch two per pull. Easy to double-tap with that gun.
    This was early ’97, and we were told there were only 30 in the country then, and there was already one in the wild, as it was lost due to a car burglary in L A, from an agent’s car.
    One of the outstanding factors is that the factory model can use any normal holster. It appears that may be true for the “switch”, that appears to mount to the rear of the slide.
    I’m tempted to call it my favorite handgun, although Glocks are not really my cup of tea.

  9. They wouldn’t have to be illegal if there were some kind of path to permissibility.

    An inanimate object has no will of its own, how can it be illegal? Perhaps it would be better to refer to the switches as “undocumented.”

  10. The issue with ‘giggle switches’ is not the danger to the intended victim….who is more often than not outright missed by the onslaught of lead, but to all the unintended targets in the general vicinity.

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