Automatic firearms and parts that convert a semiautomatic firearm to “full auto” are regulated as machineguns under the archaic and unconstitutional National Firearms Act of 1934 or NFA, which defines them as:
any weapon which shoots… automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include… any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled…
The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, banned the manufacture, sale, or transfer of any new machineguns after enactment. Pre-ban machineguns are now extremely expensive and can only be owned and transferred lawfully under the burdensome regulations of the NFA. Post-ban machineguns may only be manufactured, sold, or transferred by special Federal Firearms Licensees to the military or law enforcement.
But an auto sear or a Glock switch can be made at home on a $100 3D printer in a matter of minutes. The advent of 3D printing technology and recent illegal importations from China have proven the ban to be completely ineffective. The rise in new “machinegun conversion devices” is further proof that gun laws only apply to law abiding citizens and do nothing to stop criminals.
What is a Glock Switch?
A “Glock switch” is a device that attaches to the backplate of a Glock handgun and allows the firearm to fire continuously with a single function of the trigger. Glock produces the Glock 18 for government contracts—an automatic version of their handgun which does not use a Glock switch. In fact, Glock recently changed the design of its Glock frames so that they are incompatible with Glock switches without unauthorized modification. Therefore, Glock, Inc. is not affiliated with any device which converts semiautomatic Glocks into machineguns. Instead, the current influx of Glock switches is largely linked to illegal Chinese imports.
What is an Auto Sear?
Auto sears change the trigger mechanism of a firearm to allow a single pull of the trigger to continuously cycle a firearm’s action. An auto sear is different from a select-fire AR-15, which is manufactured to be fully automatic by using stronger internal mechanisms like special bolt carrier group and a specific lower receiver with additional manufacturing procedures to house a select-fire trigger group.
Most commonly the term auto sear refers to a part designed for an AR-15 which is inserted into the lower receiver to convert it from a semiautomatic to a fully automatic firearm. There are many transferrable auto sears for AR-15s which were manufactured before the ’86 ban and are lawfully transferrable machineguns. However, an auto sear may also be 3D printed or even formed by bending a wire or a coat hanger.
The Biden Department of Justice weaponized the definition of auto sear to even include a credit card sized piece of flat metal with an outline of an auto sear on it—a tchotchke dubbed the “auto keycard.” This ban is a violation of the First Amendment which the Trump Administration must reverse. Currently, a gun owner named Matthew Hoover is unjustly serving a five year having been convicted of transferring these keycards which the Biden Administration treated as unregistered machine conversion devices. The machinegun ban only punishes non-violent activity by otherwise law-abiding citizens. And in the case of Matt Hoover, he was never even accused of hurting or harming anyone.
