Trego's Mountain Ear

Glock had some problems with anti-gun groups and the California legislature (I may be repeating myself there) because of a device known as the ‘Glock Switch.’ What it amounts to is a device that makes the Glock pistol go full auto – basically changing a semiautomatic pistol to a machine gun. Put simply, the device is illegal as all hell. It’s a combination of old gunsmithing skills and computer use to build interchangeable parts with a 3D printer. There is nothing particularly new about the idea – one of Dillinger’s guns, built by Hyman Lebman was a model 1911 converted to full auto – as this photo shows:

I don’t believe I would enjoy shooting this – but at the time Lebman was building them (and converting Winchester 1907 rifles to machine guns) the National Firearms Act was still a gleam in some politician’s eye. Unlike Lebman’s San Antonio operation (1933), Glock switches are sold on the internet – my personal recommendation is don’t even think about buying one. Ethics aside, the fines and prison sentences are too large. Even if the switch is advertised at only $13.

Anyway, with Everytown for Gun Bans and the California legislature closing in, Glock decided to redesign all of it’s handguns, and come out with a Glock V that wouldn’t take the switch. Intriguing enough, by the time the Glock V was moving in the supply chain, the new switch for the Glock was on the market.

Like I said before – I’ve never fired a Glock. I’ve never converted a semiauto to full auto. I have repaired a few semiautomatics that, because of one worn or broken part or another had problems with multiple discharges. The problem is that it looks technically easy to convert many semiautomatics to full auto. I can’t say for sure – the only work I ever did was to make sure semiautomatics didn’t go full auto. But it looks easy enough to me. I suppose, if you gave me the task of building a semiautomatic that couldn’t be converted to a machinegun, I’d start by making it hammer fired and double action only. That way, you still might make it go full auto, but you’d have to spend big dollars changing a whole lot of parts.