We need all hands on deck to prevent as many shootings as possible by guns equipped with high-capacity magazines and so-called “switches,” which essentially convert semi-automatic guns into illegal machine guns.
As Frank Main and Tom Schuba report in Sunday’s Sun-Times, about 15 years ago, only 1% of Chicago shooting scenes had more than 20 bullet casings scattered about. Now that number is 16%, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Researchers there also found the rate of death from bullet wounds has risen — from one in seven people in 2010 to closer to one in five today.
It’s all evidence that more shooters are using firearms that can shoot bullets more quickly, and keep shooting for longer. It’s not just more perilous for their targets, but also for people caught in the crossfire.
Moreover, guns that spray so many more bullets so much more quickly are harder for shooters to control, which increases the risk of victimizing a large number of unintended targets.
“The rise of automatic switches, coupled with extended capacity magazines, has littered our streets with machine guns,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told us in an email. “What thoughtful society would think that is OK? In July, we lost Deputy Rafael Wordlaw after he was gunned down by a man armed with firearms equipped with a switch and extended magazines.”
A thoughtful society would take aim at these attachments that make the odds of dying higher — and get them off the streets.
Easily hidden, easily fired, more lethal
As the Sun-Times and WBEZ reported in 2022, illegal machine guns were on the street that can fire 20 shots in about a second. Many of the people now carrying guns in Chicago neighborhoods and elsewhere prefer handguns that are outfitted with switches and high-capacity magazines because they can be easily concealed, unlike a military-style rifle.
A shooter with a semi-automatic gun needs to squeeze the trigger every time a shot is fired. A shooter with an automatic gun needs only to squeeze and hold the trigger, and the gun will continue to fire, spreading far more destruction. Most handguns sold by licensed gun stores are semiautomatic, so they are ready-made to be converted to a weapon that is more lethal.
High-capacity magazines that feed shells into a firearm’s chamber allow a gun user to fire bullets for a greater amount of time before reloading. Shooters know they can fire indiscriminately because they have plenty of bullets. If they run out, they can reload with another high-capacity magazine. In the Highland Park July 4th parade shooting, the suspect used a semi-automatic firearm with a 30-round magazine and then two more extended-capacity magazines, killing seven people and wounding dozens of others. Afterward, police found 83 shell casings.
No one needs a weapon with these devices for self-defense.
The damage can be seen elsewhere around the nation as well. Police said they believed switches were used in a mass shooting last month in Birmingham, Alabama in which at least four people were killed and 17 others were shot.
In 2022, Illinois enacted the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which banned the sale and distribution of assault weapons, switches and magazines with the most capacity. Gun safety advocates wanted to limit the capacity of extended magazines to 10 bullets, but wound up settling for 15 on handguns and 10 on a long guns. That limit should be reduced statewide to zero, as it is in Cook County.
Reducing the number of switches and high-capacity magazines on the street will be a challenge. Ammunition is cheap and can easily be brought over Illinois’ borders. Switches can be manufactured with 3-D printers in someone’s garage. Switches shipped from China are small and hard for the U.S. Postal Service to intercept.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives should step up its efforts to crack down on illegal switches. And it would help if pop culture figures would stop glorifying the idea of carrying weapons equipped with high-capacity magazines and switches, as Main and Schuba report happens all too frequently.
More vigorous investigations and prosecutions and tougher laws and penalties are needed to stop more and more bullets from spreading carnage in more communities. It’s time to get going.
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