State, Baltimore sue Glock for rise in modified guns that function like ‘illegal machine guns’.
Lawsuit says company has failed to implement ‘reasonable controls’ as more violent crimes involve modified Glocks
Cool, MD is wasting taxpayer money with a suit that goes nowhere. This is like suing car manufacturers because people are illegally modifying the cars to evade emissions controls.
I could readily modify my 1911 pistol to do much the same by modifying the sear. (I wouldn't because machine pistols are almost impossible to control; there's a reason that the Beretta 93R has a forward grip for your support hand.) The only difference here is that someone figured out how to do this with Glock pistols using a part that can be 3D printed easily.
You can modify any semiautomatic firearm to fire full auto, uncontrolled(gun keeps shooting after the first shot until empty regardless of trigger use). The Glock situation is unique because the switch utilizes a safety mechanism that is part of the factory design to allow for controlled full auto(gun fires so long as the trigger is depressed). The funny part is the Glock 18, their full auto pistol, has a fairly complex system to allow it to switch between full auto and semi auto.
The ability to aim at a target and fire full auto effectively really isn't a factor in criminals wanting a full auto Glock, they go for accuracy by volume and just "to whom it my concern" the rounds that miss the intended target.
It is a stupid suit and they would be better off addressing the causes of gun violence instead, but that would be harder to do and takes longer than an election term.
The thing is, the root causes of this kind of violence are well known, and have been for a long time. But it's radioactive to say, hey, maybe we should work to eliminate poverty and the economic gulf separating the poorest and the wealthiest in society. All the measure that we might take--improving education, socialized medicine, eliminating systemic racism, criminal justice reform that focuses on reform instead of punishment, drug decriminalization--touch on the root cause, but aren't themselves the root cause.