The recent surge in proliferation of full auto “switches” (particularly for Glock handguns) has Chicago city officials scrambling, occuring somehow despite all of the legislation banning them. These small, plastic or metal devices that replace, in the case of a Glock, the stock backplate on the slide grant the user select-fire capability. They can be purchased through the mail from places like Wish.com, or Alibaba, (though some of us may remember when they were advertised on social media alongside “solvent traps”) made in a home shop, or even 3D printed for the cost of a hunk of plastic.
However one acquires a switch, they are themselves considered NFA items, whether they are mounted to a firearm or not, and thus not legal to own without a tax stamp. Apparently, there is a large (and rising) number of Chicago citizens who have decided that the NFA is not relevant, and are purchasing or making them illegally.
Desperate for a way to bolster the gun ban idea they’ve so thoroughly bought into, in the face of the abject failure of anti-gun legislation to address or prevent teenage felons from acquiring pocket-sized machineguns, they have announced a new approach: banning guns. Yes, it’s a radical shift, but it’s so crazy it just might work: When your gun ban doesn’t work, the solution is clearly another gun ban.
Specifically, they’ve decided that since it’s a simple thing to add a switch to a Glock, that Glocks themselves should be banned as “easily converted” guns. How this addresses a problem that is fundamentally decentralized, in that anyone (literally anyone, a 10y/o can do this with funding and minimal instruction) can currently 3D print an MP5 clone with a couple hundred bucks and an internet connection, we certainly can’t say, but we’re very interested to hear their rationale, because guns have clearly won the war on guns.
