By Kyeland Jackson and Rochelle Olson
The Minnesota Star Tribune
(The Minnesota Star Tribune) — Joined by the grieving parents of a son killed by a stray bullet hours before graduating from college, Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Thursday that he is suing one of the nation’s largest firearm manufacturers for designing and touting guns that are too easily made into automatic weapons.
The lawsuit claims that Glock Inc. has known for nearly 40 years that its semi-automatic handguns can be easily converted into illegal machine guns. In 1988, Glock founder Gaston Glock demonstrated a device that converted a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic machine gun. Ellison and O’Hara said some 65% of guns on the street are Glocks and that the manufacturer could easily fix the conversion problem with a design change.
Instead Glock has continued to promote the “fun” of shooting a fully automatic handgun while knowing that its semi-automatic handguns can be quickly and easily converted into machine guns and that machine guns are illegal in the United States, Ellison’s lawsuit said.
“We are not asking Glock to stop selling handguns. We are asking Glock to change their design of its semi-automatic handguns available to the public so that they cannot be eastly converted into illegal machineguns,” Ellison said at a news conference at the Minnesota State Capitol, adding that some Glock switches sell for as low as $10. Others can be 3-D printed within 30 minutes, endangering law enforcement who’ve seized scores firearms with similar switches attached.
“We have every reason to believe that without decisive action from Glock, these numbers [of automatic gunfire] will rise. Preachers will do more funerals. Families will grieve more children. We’ve got to act, and we’ve got to act now.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara and Greg and Veronique Johnson, the parents of 21-year-old Charlie Johnson, stood with Ellison to support the lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court. Johnson died after automatic gunfire erupted outside the Monarch nightclub in May 2021 just hours before he was to graduate from the University of St. Thomas. A friend said he and Johnson stepped from an alley near the club when gunfire rang, striking Johnson in the back as he tried to escape. Shedding tears for the son he called his best friend, Greg Johnson said Glock should be held accountable.
“I’m a lifelong hunter and gun owner, and I’ve asked myself many times: What’s the purpose of a device like this switch that can turn a handgun into a semi-automatic? And I can only think of two: One is to increase my ability to put a bullet in a human being. The other one is, ‘I think it’s cool and I want to be able to do that.’ Obviously that’s what Glock is marketing,” Johnson said. “Think of how many additional handguns they’ve sold knowing that this was possible, and knowing that it increases the demand for their handguns. Shame on them.”
Ellison and O’Hara made the case that a precipitous spike in automatic gunfire has made the streets more deadly.
During a Capitol news conference, Ellison and O’Hara showed video from Glock in which the manufacturer touted how easily its guns can be converted to fire automatically, releasing a fusillade quickly by attaching a cheap — and illegal — switch device. In the video, a demonstrator fires a semi-automatic Glock pistol three times, pausing for a second in between each shot for the gun to fire again. After that demonstrator activates a switch attached to that same Glock, the weapon fires more than a dozen rounds within two seconds of pulling the trigger.
In addition to making guns deadlier, they also make them far less accurate and harder to control, increasing the chances that bystanders are caught in the crossfire.
O’Hara said automatic gunfire didn’t exist in Minneapolis before 2020. He and Ellison stood beside a graphic showing that in 2020, only 154 shots fired in Minneapolis were from fully automatic weapons. By 2022, that number was 3,024. Last year it was 2,595.
“It’s obvious what the problem is: its switches,” O’Hara said, describing a 2023 case where Minneapolis police officer Jacob Spies was struck and wounded after being ambushed by a barrage of bullets fired from a Glock with an attached switch. “This is not a political issue, this should not be a partisan issue. This is a violent crime issue — this is an officer safety issue, and it is urgent.”
Switches and fully automatic guns are already illegal in Minnesota, but still easy to obtain or make. “Why not go upstream?” Ellison said. “Why not stop the problem?”
Ellison said he is seeking both regulatory relief from the courts and monetary damages from the courts. He didn’t specify an amount.
Glock is owned by an Austrian parent company with U.S. headquarters in Smyrna, Ga. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A similar lawsuit was filed in New Jersey state courts on Thursday. Ellison is hopeful other states will sue as the matter advances in court. “People will see these cases are viable, important and they save lives,” he said.
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