![]() Quantifying incidents involving automatic weapons fire is a challenge. “Not since Prohibition have we seen this many machine guns being used to commit crimes.” “When we tell them about it, they go back into their evidence vault and they look and check and they find this stuff,” he said. Griffith said that despite the growing ubiquity of the devices, many members of law enforcement do not know how to recognize them on firearms they seize from criminals. A company spokesperson said YouTube does not allow “content instructing viewers how to manufacture accessories that convert a firearm to automatic fire, or to sell those accessories on our platform.” YouTube removed the videos after CNN asked about them. One group of auto-switch instructional videos that remained online until August were linked to a man charged in December by federal prosecutors in Texas for allegedly making, possessing and transferring 3D-printed switches. “In a matter of 15 minutes I was able to do it myself the first time.” Below, Griffith explains.Ī CNN review of YouTube based on key-word search terms revealed multiple such videos that had collectively racked up more than 1 million views. “It’s very easy,” said Griffith, who explained how he learned to use a 3D printer to make the devices on YouTube. ![]() The increasing availability of auto switches has been driven in part by the ease with which they can be made using cheap, 3D-printed parts and instructions available online, according to Earl Griffith, the chief of ATF’s Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division. In Washington, DC, investigators looking into a young man who allegedly tossed a converted handgun into a trash can as police approached later found several videos on YouTube in which he rapped about “switches.” In Los Angeles, a man under investigation for supplying local gang members with guns allegedly sold an ATF informant a Glock conversion device along with a Glock 9mm pistol and a high-capacity magazine. CNN reviewed cases in which they were allegedly hawked on social media, sold under the table by a licensed gun dealer in Miami, and turned up in the possession of alleged drug dealers distributing methamphetamine, fentanyl and oxycodone. The devices appear to be an emerging commodity on the black market. “It’s gonna go to the people who want to go shoot some people, gangbangers and sh*t.” “People are gonna get them switches,” he told the agent, according to a court filing. An alleged associate of the man was recorded telling an undercover ATF agent posing as a buyer that he’d get a better price if he bought in bulk, and that he should act quickly because demand was high. In Chicago, a man prosecutors called “a prolific machine gun dealer” allegedly continued to sell the devices while out on bond and awaiting trial. ![]() Liu Guanguan/China News Service/Getty ImagesĪ CNN review of court filings in cities across the US found dozens of cases in recent years involving so-called conversion devices or semi-automatic handguns already converted to fully automatic. The scene of a mass shooting is blocked off with police tape on Apin Sacramento, California. The 30-year-veteran officer died in a torrent of gunfire from a convicted felon armed with an illegally converted weapon. “But now machine guns are back, and they’re everywhere.”Īutomatic weapons have been used in several high-profile assaults in recent years, including a mass shooting in Sacramento, California, in which six people were killed and a dozen injured, a school shooting in Washington, DC, in which a sniper with automatic rifles unleashed a barrage of more than 200 shots, wounding four, and the slaying of Houston police officer William “Bill” Jeffrey during the service of an arrest warrant last year. Gun laws virtually eliminated automatic weapons from city streets for decades, Chittum said. 2 official before signing on as an executive with ShotSpotter earlier this year. “Not since Prohibition have we seen this many machine guns being used to commit crimes,” said Tom Chittum, who spent more than two decades with the ATF and retired as its No. In the years since, 3D printers have only added to the problem, law enforcement officials said. There has been a corresponding spike in seizures of conversion devices by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in recent years, from fewer than 100 in 2017 to more than 1,500 last year.ĬNN earlier reported on an ATF effort in 2019 to recover what agents suspected were thousands of such devices illegally imported from China.
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