Glock is facing another lawsuit. This time, it comes from New Jersey and Minnesota. They're suing the company because it makes an incredibly popular handgun and they're not interested in changing a design that has decades of proof that it works.
That's not how they frame it, of course, but beyond the claims of full-auto switches, that's what's really up.
Yeah, that's right. They're suing Glock supposedly over "Glock switches." More accurately, that the company won't modify its design so people can't add a third-party device to it which also happens to be illegal.
New Jersey and Minnesota sued Glock on Thursday, calling on the gunmaker to stop selling firearms that can be adapted with dime-sized switches to fire up to 1,200 rounds a minute.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also announced that top law enforcement officials in 14 states and the District of Columbia are forming a coalition to reduce gun violence by coordinating enforcement of the states’ consumer protection laws.
The moves by mostly Democrat-led states amount to early pushback against President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration, which Platkin, a Democrat, said “routinely sides with the gun industry.”
Before speaking at a Boys & Girls Club in New Jersey’s largest city, Platkin’s office played a video of a law enforcement officer demonstrating how to use the Glock switch. The video shows an officer first firing the pistol without the switch, requiring a pause between shots. The officer then installs the switch and is able to fire multiple rounds without any pause.
...
“For decades, Glock has knowingly sold weapons that anyone with a screwdriver and a YouTube video can convert into a military-grade machine gun in a matter of minutes,” Platkin said.
Except, as I've already pointed out, those devices are prohibited under the National Firearms Act. You can't lawfully buy those devices in the first place. As they were developed after the 1984 machine gun ban, you can't even find one that was grandfathered into the machine gun registry. Every single such device in private hands are a criminal offense, so far as I'm aware.
So why should Glock be required to change their design when the law itself is supposed to prevent people from doing what they're doing?
Let's remember that the current design is one of the most reliable handguns on the market today. They just work and work pretty much every time. There's a reason this particular model of handgun is so very popular with police and private citizens alike. Forcing them to change their design may well impact that reliability. Remember the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
Well, this is one of those things no one wants to "fix" because nothing is broken.
If the laws against these devices actually worked, there wouldn't be an issue in the first place. They don't, which is where the problem comes in.
But this isn't really about full-auto switches. This is about punishing Glock for making guns to sell to folks like you and me. That's what every lawsuit against a gun company is really about. It's about trying to make it too expensive to do business anymore. You don't need to ban guns if no one makes them for the general market. Especially if they can ban you making your own somewhere along the way.