States take a different approach to getting ‘switches’ off the streets

Lopez, a four-time gunshot survivor who now works to prevent shootings at COMPASS Youth Collaborative, attributes that change to the proliferation of machine gun conversion devices, commonly referred to as Glock switches. The small devices can convert semiautomatic guns into fully automatic weapons capable of firing dozens of rounds in seconds. And they’ve been showing up at crime scenes and shootings with increasing frequency. Between 2019 and 2023 — the most recent years of data available — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recovered more than 31,000 machine gun conversion devices nationwide.