This significantly drove up the cost and difficulty of owning one.

In 1934, after several high-profile crimes involving machine guns, Congress passed the National Firearms Act, which required anyone who owned a fully automatic weapon to register it with the government and pay a $200 tax, equivalent to about $4,000 today. One California ATF agent, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the agency’s behalf, said that in his first decade on the job, he hardly ever came across machine guns now he sees firearms that have been converted with auto sears “all the time.” Some criminals, the agent added, have been caught with the devices on ghost guns - untraceable firearms that can be made at home or obtained without a background check.įor nearly 90 years the federal government waged an aggressive campaign to shrink the pool of automatic weapons available to the public. To gang members, auto sears are an advantageous new accessory that can inflict incredible damage and intimidate enemies, especially when paired with high-capacity magazines. The suspect managed to escape, but police arrested him later that same day at his home, where they also found a cache of guns, machine gun components, and a 3D printer. Four months later, a convicted felon with a converted Glock wounded three more Houston officers in a gun battle in broad daylight. One officer was killed and another wounded. In September, a Houston man opened fire with a Glock pistol modified with an auto sear after police showed up at his front door to arrest him on a narcotics warrant. A Glock spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment. That’s because of the Glock’s internal design, which makes its parts easy to access and modify. “The information is out there, and the knowledge to do it is out.”Īn auto sear installed on a Glock handgun.Ĭonversion devices can be installed in many types of handguns or rifles, but they’re particularly common for Glock pistols. “It is so simple,” said Rick Vasquez, the former head of the ATF’s Firearms Technology Division. Once in a person’s hands, installation can take just seconds and requires scant technical knowledge or tools. They can also be created using a 3D printer. Auto sears are often advertised as airsoft parts or tools and shipped with false documentation and packaging labels. The American market is largely supplied by China, where manufacturers sell the devices on websites like Alibaba and directly to consumers, law enforcement officials say. The ascent of the auto sear has been propelled by its availability and ease of use.

“They’re one of the scariest things we’ve dealt with since I became an agent.” “Auto sears are everywhere on the street right now,” said Jefferey Boshek, a 21-year ATF veteran who now serves as the special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Division. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for policing guns in the U.S., said it seized 1,500 weapons modified with auto sears in 2021, a staggering increase over 2020, when only 300 were recovered. The government has not previously compiled this data, and the actual number of illegally converted machine guns on the streets is likely far higher. We found over 260 cases filed in the last five years, including robberies, assaults, and murders, with over 1,000 devices recovered. From 2017 to 2021, the number of cases jumped from 10 to 83, according to our exclusive nationwide analysis of court filings. Last year, members of the Boogaloo Boys, an accelerationist movement that hopes to spark a second civil war, used weapons equipped with auto sears to attack a federal courthouse.Īn investigation by The Trace and VICE News found that federal prosecutions involving automatic conversion devices have spiked in recent years. In recent years, these small metal or plastic devices have exploded in popularity on the black market and gained a particular cachet among criminals and anti-government extremists. Also known as switches or chips, auto sears have been around since the ‘70s but are exceedingly tough to acquire legally in the United States, where machine guns cannot legally be owned without a special license.

Court records show that auto sears have been used in robberies, homicides, and extremist attacks.Īn auto sear - the most common automatic conversion device - transforms a semiautomatic gun into a weapon capable of emptying an entire magazine with a single pull of the trigger.

With VICE News, we document the rise of the auto sear, a small, cheap device that converts a semiautomatic firearm into an automatic one.

Full auto machine guns for sale