5 ms·

'Switches' are turning handguns into machine guns on Ontario streets

17 points by colinprince 2y ago

big-green-man 2y ago
> You are converting a weapon to make it do something that it was not intended to do... Yes, they are actually. These are glock full auto switches, which if you've ever seen a glock and you know how it works, you know how easy it is. Glock designed the handgun specifically to allow this, and they even manufacture switches themselves. I don't know why they're going out of their way to not inform people of what exactly is happening. People are buying or building a very easy to make gun, buying or building a very easy to make part and adding it to the gun. It's not something anyone can easily stop anywhere, but the last paragraph really gives you a clue. Canadian law enforcement understands that the phenomenon of growing violence in street crime is a cultural problem and pretty new in Canada at least in it's current form and in recent decades.
- qball 2y ago
  >Glock designed the handgun specifically to allow this, and they even manufacture switches themselves. It really isn't, though. The way these work is exploiting the fact that the backplate on the gun can be modified such that the out of battery safety (inside the gun) functions as an auto trip. Which, coincidentally, is why US (and to a point, Canadian) regulatory agencies do their best to consider guns with safeties like this machine guns. They shouldn't; horse has already left the barn with that one especially considering full automatic fire is de facto legal and (even when in cases when it isn't legal) is trivial to achieve with guns that aren't Glocks, and this is something gun laws in the entire rest of the world have tacitly acknowledged for decades. >People are buying Not anymore, they aren't; the purchase, sale, or transfer of handguns is banned in Canada. Not that that's stopping the gangs, but those bans have never been about stopping crime anyway. >I don't know why they're going out of their way to not inform people of what exactly is happening. Who the criminals are, and the route the guns take to even get there in the first place, is extremely politically inconvenient for the Canadian government as it relates to blatant policy missteps that now affect Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
  - tzmudzin 2y ago
    > these bans have never been about stopping crime anyway. Genuinely curious European here: what in your view was their purpose?
    - qball 2y ago
      It may surprise you to know that Canada currently has more restrictive gun laws than any European country. It bans handguns, most modern rifles, and magazine size limits are very low, and treats down-converted rifles (from full-auto to semi-auto) as being full-auto. It additionally restricts the sale of pressure-bearing components for certain firearms and magazines, though you don't actually have to own the rifle it's a part of to buy it. We have a licensing scheme that takes roughly 6 months to issue you a license, and special transport rules for handguns and short rifles. We don't have gangs from the East smuggling in machine guns; and most crime guns come from an intentionally-porous border. However, guns are a cultural flashpoint in most of the New World in ways they just aren't in most European countries. Part of this is an export of US politics, where sub-polities who want to ban guns are in a constant and bitter culture war with those that do not; Canadians copy a lot of US politics along whatever fault lines they happen to be on (currently, it's largest cities vs. everyone else). It's also a filter bubble problem, where the polities and voters that don't see guns as an issue are several thousand kilometers away from those that do (100km is a daily commute for us, but it can be the other side of the country for you), so you're not going to be exposed to 'normal' people on the other side. >what in your view was their purpose? Revenge. The sitting government did not like the fact that people from several thousand kilometers away came and protested certain edicts pertaining to a novel cold virus; those people are most likely to own guns. This was simply a "fuck you". There are no problems with the crime rate here; other than that which the sitting government has encouraged with their policies, but European countries all have that problem too and for the same reason. Which makes people want guns -> government doesn't like that -> government limits that ability, naturally.
      - crustycoder 2y ago
        > It may surprise you to know that Canada currently has more restrictive gun laws than any European country. It certainly would, as it's not true.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  > at least in it's current form and in recent decades. That's an important caveat. The crime and gangs problem were both larger in the 70's than it is today.
  - sincerecook 2y ago
    Why is that important?
bentcorner 2y ago
For anyone curious like I was, here's how they work: https://youtu.be/J_-QBT9Tul4?t=72 https://youtu.be/J_-QBT9Tul4?t=72 (pardon the AI voiceover but it's good enough)
WorkerBee28474 2y ago
And there will continue to be handguns and auto sears coming across the USA-Canada border until there exists the political will to crack down on smuggling via the cross-border native reserves.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  The border is 5500 miles long. The reserves may be the easiest place to smuggle guns across today, and $4B worth of goods cross the border every day. That's a lot of miles to guard and trucks to inspect. If we stepped up enforcement on reserves, the smuggling would just move elsewhere.
- dole 2y ago
  No one’s smuggling any quantity of autosears that you can buy on Aliexpress or Wish or print yourself on any 3d printer in 30 minutes.
SoftTalker 2y ago
> The person firing this weapon has no control, nor do they understand that one to two seconds with their finger on that trigger can release between 30 and 60 rounds potentially. Are there Glock magazines that hold 60 rounds? The highest capacity I see in a very quick online search is around 30. Standard capacity is 10-17 rounds. Can the barrel and the mechanism withstand the heat of 60 rounds fired that fast? Glocks are already at least anecdotally prone to jamming. And, I'd guess that a person making such a modification understands exactly what it will enable.
- qball 2y ago
  >The highest capacity I see in a very quick online search is around 30. The largest reliable magazine for a Glock that is still halfway concealable holds 33 rounds. The largest reliable magazine for a Glock holds 50 rounds, but it's a drum and you can't conceal that very well. Larger magazines may exist, but they are not both reliable and concealable. >Glocks are already at least anecdotally prone to jamming. This is 100% caused by mags that don't say Glock or Magpul on it. These guns are fantastically reliable.
  - Temporary_31337 2y ago
    I still take issue with mr Snider scaremongering like this- in the unlikely scenario that someone would actually be running around with a 60 round mag glock it would likely jam or overheat anyway.
    - qball 2y ago
      An NYPD officer? Scaremongering? Perish the thought. I'd actually expect the 15-round magazines to be more common, given that's the size of magazine the Glock 19 comes with, and they don't stick out of the gun. But then again I'm not convinced any of these guys are carrying more than one magazine anyway (and if they were, they'd be too busy fumbling around in the dark getting the magazine out of their pockets- it's not like gangsters even know magazine holders even exist). However, if you're using OEM Glock mags, it's not going to jam (don't buy SGM or Promag, not only are they garbage but they aren't even that much cheaper- which, to be fair, gangsters probably think all 'stendos are the same and would thus run into that problem more), and you literally cannot hold enough rounds on your person to make the gun overheat, especially if you're not wearing a competition-style belt designed to hold a bunch of mags. But then again, if your Glawk Fowtay Problem Solva can't solve the problem in 300 rounds you are probably doing something wrong.
Gustomaximus 2y ago
Obviously not supporting having these switches, but wondering if it makes shooting more dangerous or less. My non expert guess is the people using these 'pray and spray' in something I suspect is very hard to control. This would serve to make a heap of wild shots plus make them run out of bullets very quickly for any kind of follow up or ongoing fight. But at the same time send a heap of bullets fast. I wonder if it becomes one of those events that on the surface looks far worse but statistically is not. Or more unintended bystander deaths? To be clear. I don't know the answer or are promoting one, but it has the feeling of something that might have a counter initiative answer.
- dh2022 2y ago
  How would “Send a heap of bullets fast” be less dangerous than “send less bullets”? When a bullet gets out of the gun it has a chance to hurt someone (including innocent people). A bullet that remains in the gun hurts no-one…
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    I guess it depends why they are shooting. Is it to injure or kill as many people in an area, or shoot a particular individual at some considerable distance. I think the GP post is looking at from the perspective of the gun owner? Even from their perspective it may not make sense to modify the weapon. Obviously, not shooting at all and injuring anyone is the best, in general.
    - dh2022 2y ago
      Looking from the perspective of the gun owner makes sense.
  - bitfilped 2y ago
    It depends if you mean the person being shot at or bystanders. I imagine in most scenarios where people are using switches they have little to no firearm training in general and especially not any with switches engaged (it's not like you can use them at the range.) Their shots are probably more dangerous for bystanders and less dangerous for the specific person being targeted when compared to someone shooting a standard pistol that has training or plenty of range time.

17 points by colinprince 2y ago

> You are converting a weapon to make it do something that it was not intended to do... Yes, they are actually. These are glock full auto switches, which if you've ever seen a glock and you know how it works, you know how easy it is. Glock designed the handgun specifically to allow this, and they even manufacture switches themselves. I don't know why they're going out of their way to not inform people of what exactly is happening. People are buying or building a very easy to make gun, buying or building a very easy to make part and adding it to the gun. It's not something anyone can easily stop anywhere, but the last paragraph really gives you a clue. Canadian law enforcement understands that the phenomenon of growing violence in street crime is a cultural problem and pretty new in Canada at least in it's current form and in recent decades.

qball 2y ago
>Glock designed the handgun specifically to allow this, and they even manufacture switches themselves. It really isn't, though. The way these work is exploiting the fact that the backplate on the gun can be modified such that the out of battery safety (inside the gun) functions as an auto trip. Which, coincidentally, is why US (and to a point, Canadian) regulatory agencies do their best to consider guns with safeties like this machine guns. They shouldn't; horse has already left the barn with that one especially considering full automatic fire is de facto legal and (even when in cases when it isn't legal) is trivial to achieve with guns that aren't Glocks, and this is something gun laws in the entire rest of the world have tacitly acknowledged for decades. >People are buying Not anymore, they aren't; the purchase, sale, or transfer of handguns is banned in Canada. Not that that's stopping the gangs, but those bans have never been about stopping crime anyway. >I don't know why they're going out of their way to not inform people of what exactly is happening. Who the criminals are, and the route the guns take to even get there in the first place, is extremely politically inconvenient for the Canadian government as it relates to blatant policy missteps that now affect Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
- tzmudzin 2y ago
  > these bans have never been about stopping crime anyway. Genuinely curious European here: what in your view was their purpose?
  - qball 2y ago
    It may surprise you to know that Canada currently has more restrictive gun laws than any European country. It bans handguns, most modern rifles, and magazine size limits are very low, and treats down-converted rifles (from full-auto to semi-auto) as being full-auto. It additionally restricts the sale of pressure-bearing components for certain firearms and magazines, though you don't actually have to own the rifle it's a part of to buy it. We have a licensing scheme that takes roughly 6 months to issue you a license, and special transport rules for handguns and short rifles. We don't have gangs from the East smuggling in machine guns; and most crime guns come from an intentionally-porous border. However, guns are a cultural flashpoint in most of the New World in ways they just aren't in most European countries. Part of this is an export of US politics, where sub-polities who want to ban guns are in a constant and bitter culture war with those that do not; Canadians copy a lot of US politics along whatever fault lines they happen to be on (currently, it's largest cities vs. everyone else). It's also a filter bubble problem, where the polities and voters that don't see guns as an issue are several thousand kilometers away from those that do (100km is a daily commute for us, but it can be the other side of the country for you), so you're not going to be exposed to 'normal' people on the other side. >what in your view was their purpose? Revenge. The sitting government did not like the fact that people from several thousand kilometers away came and protested certain edicts pertaining to a novel cold virus; those people are most likely to own guns. This was simply a "fuck you". There are no problems with the crime rate here; other than that which the sitting government has encouraged with their policies, but European countries all have that problem too and for the same reason. Which makes people want guns -> government doesn't like that -> government limits that ability, naturally.
    - crustycoder 2y ago
      > It may surprise you to know that Canada currently has more restrictive gun laws than any European country. It certainly would, as it's not true.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
> at least in it's current form and in recent decades. That's an important caveat. The crime and gangs problem were both larger in the 70's than it is today.
- sincerecook 2y ago
  Why is that important?

bentcorner 2y ago

For anyone curious like I was, here's how they work: https://youtu.be/J_-QBT9Tul4?t=72 https://youtu.be/J_-QBT9Tul4?t=72 (pardon the AI voiceover but it's good enough)

WorkerBee28474 2y ago

And there will continue to be handguns and auto sears coming across the USA-Canada border until there exists the political will to crack down on smuggling via the cross-border native reserves.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
The border is 5500 miles long. The reserves may be the easiest place to smuggle guns across today, and $4B worth of goods cross the border every day. That's a lot of miles to guard and trucks to inspect. If we stepped up enforcement on reserves, the smuggling would just move elsewhere.
dole 2y ago
No one’s smuggling any quantity of autosears that you can buy on Aliexpress or Wish or print yourself on any 3d printer in 30 minutes.

SoftTalker 2y ago

> The person firing this weapon has no control, nor do they understand that one to two seconds with their finger on that trigger can release between 30 and 60 rounds potentially. Are there Glock magazines that hold 60 rounds? The highest capacity I see in a very quick online search is around 30. Standard capacity is 10-17 rounds. Can the barrel and the mechanism withstand the heat of 60 rounds fired that fast? Glocks are already at least anecdotally prone to jamming. And, I'd guess that a person making such a modification understands exactly what it will enable.

qball 2y ago
>The highest capacity I see in a very quick online search is around 30. The largest reliable magazine for a Glock that is still halfway concealable holds 33 rounds. The largest reliable magazine for a Glock holds 50 rounds, but it's a drum and you can't conceal that very well. Larger magazines may exist, but they are not both reliable and concealable. >Glocks are already at least anecdotally prone to jamming. This is 100% caused by mags that don't say Glock or Magpul on it. These guns are fantastically reliable.
- Temporary_31337 2y ago
  I still take issue with mr Snider scaremongering like this- in the unlikely scenario that someone would actually be running around with a 60 round mag glock it would likely jam or overheat anyway.
  - qball 2y ago
    An NYPD officer? Scaremongering? Perish the thought. I'd actually expect the 15-round magazines to be more common, given that's the size of magazine the Glock 19 comes with, and they don't stick out of the gun. But then again I'm not convinced any of these guys are carrying more than one magazine anyway (and if they were, they'd be too busy fumbling around in the dark getting the magazine out of their pockets- it's not like gangsters even know magazine holders even exist). However, if you're using OEM Glock mags, it's not going to jam (don't buy SGM or Promag, not only are they garbage but they aren't even that much cheaper- which, to be fair, gangsters probably think all 'stendos are the same and would thus run into that problem more), and you literally cannot hold enough rounds on your person to make the gun overheat, especially if you're not wearing a competition-style belt designed to hold a bunch of mags. But then again, if your Glawk Fowtay Problem Solva can't solve the problem in 300 rounds you are probably doing something wrong.

Gustomaximus 2y ago

Obviously not supporting having these switches, but wondering if it makes shooting more dangerous or less. My non expert guess is the people using these 'pray and spray' in something I suspect is very hard to control. This would serve to make a heap of wild shots plus make them run out of bullets very quickly for any kind of follow up or ongoing fight. But at the same time send a heap of bullets fast. I wonder if it becomes one of those events that on the surface looks far worse but statistically is not. Or more unintended bystander deaths? To be clear. I don't know the answer or are promoting one, but it has the feeling of something that might have a counter initiative answer.

dh2022 2y ago
How would “Send a heap of bullets fast” be less dangerous than “send less bullets”? When a bullet gets out of the gun it has a chance to hurt someone (including innocent people). A bullet that remains in the gun hurts no-one…
- rdtsc 2y ago
  I guess it depends why they are shooting. Is it to injure or kill as many people in an area, or shoot a particular individual at some considerable distance. I think the GP post is looking at from the perspective of the gun owner? Even from their perspective it may not make sense to modify the weapon. Obviously, not shooting at all and injuring anyone is the best, in general.
  - dh2022 2y ago
    Looking from the perspective of the gun owner makes sense.
- bitfilped 2y ago
  It depends if you mean the person being shot at or bystanders. I imagine in most scenarios where people are using switches they have little to no firearm training in general and especially not any with switches engaged (it's not like you can use them at the range.) Their shots are probably more dangerous for bystanders and less dangerous for the specific person being targeted when compared to someone shooting a standard pistol that has training or plenty of range time.