The City of Chicago announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Glock, the manufacturer of the most popular handguns in the United States, alleging that Glock is facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns on the streets of Chicago.
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The lawsuit alleges that Glock unreasonably endangers Chicagoans by manufacturing and selling in the Chicago civilian market semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear – a cheap, small device commonly known as a “Glock switch.â€
The suit is the first to use Illinois’s new Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, passed and signed into law in 2023 to hold gun companies accountable for conduct that endangers the public.
Filed in Cook County Circuit Court, the lawsuit reports that law enforcement personnel in Chicago have recovered over 1,100 Glocks that have been converted into illegal machine guns in the last two years alone in connection with a wide variety of crimes, including homicides, aggravated assaults, batteries, kidnappings, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings, and attempted robberies.
The lawsuit alleges that Glock knows it could fix the problem but refuses to do so, and the City is seeking a court order requiring Glock to cease sales of its easily converted pistols to Chicago civilians.
The City also seeks penalties against Glock and damages for the harm that Glock has caused to the City.
According to the complaint, the ease with which Glock pistols can be modified with Glock switches has gained national attention in the past few years for its unique and outsized role in worsening America’s gun violence crisis.
The switches are the size of a quarter and are easily purchased illegally online for around $20 or manufactured at home using a 3D printer.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has reported a 400-percent increase in recoveries of illegally modified machine guns from 2020 to 2021 and a 570-percent increase in auto sears from 2017 to 2021 as compared to the previous five-year period.
Once installed, Glock switches allow pistols to fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute – a rate as fast as or faster than many fully automatic firearms and machine guns used by the United States military.
While machine guns have been heavily regulated and restricted for almost a century because of their potential for danger, today’s lawsuit alleges that Glock’s refusal to take reasonable steps to prevent its readily available semiautomatic weapons from being easily converted has made it possible for criminals to arm themselves with fully automatic firepower.
The lawsuit further alleges that Glock’s actions and failures to act have exacerbated a public safety crisis in Chicago.
In Chicago, where officials have long worked to address the city’s gun violence epidemic, the complaint details numerous examples of fully automatic Glocks recovered in connection with serious and violent crimes.
The lawsuit alleges that Glock unreasonably endangers Chicago residents and communities by continuing to sell a firearm that can easily be modified to an illegal machine gun, in violation of state and local law.
The complaint also alleges that selling a weapon that can be so easily converted to an illegal machine gun and failing to take reasonable steps to prevent or mitigate the problem is an unfair business practice, is negligent, and creates, maintains, and contributes to a public nuisance.
Further, the lawsuit alleges that Glock is aiding and abetting violations of the federal and Illinois prohibitions on the possession of machine guns. The lawsuit does not pertain to the sale of Glocks to law enforcement. ■