New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Minnesota AG Keith Ellison are suing gunmaker Glock, alleging that the company has refused to modify the design of its pistols to prevent the use of illegal switches that convert the firearms into full-auto machine guns.
The lawsuits are part of a new multistate coalition comprised of 16 attorneys general that Platkin says was formed to “reduce gun violence through the coordinated enforcement of the States’ respective civil liability and consumer protection laws.” In other words, they’re hoping to pin the blame and responsibility for violent crime on the firearms industry as well as the trigger pullers.
In addition to New Jersey and Maryland, the Democratic AGs in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont are also a part of the new coalition aiming to sue the firearms industry into oblivion.
The lawsuits announced by Platkin and Ellison weren’t entirely unanticipated. In March of this year the city of Chicago partnered with Everytown LAw to sue Glock. The lawsuit was filed soon after a meeting between staffers with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Glock executives, where Glock declined to change its design. On the day Chicago’s lawsuit was filed Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt sent a tweet stating, “Federal officials recently contacted Glock to discuss implementing new ways to modify Glock pistols to make it harder for Glock switches to be installed. Rather than help, Glock falsely insisted there is nothing they can do,” which has prompted the House Oversight Committee to investigate possible collusion between Everytown and the White House.
Soon after Chicago’s lawsuit was filed a group of 13 AGs (all of whom are a part of the coalition announced today) sent what amounted to a pre-litigation letter to Glock demanding the company preserve all records dating back to 1987 that encompass:
- The conversion of Glock semiautomatic handguns into automatic weapons, through the use of “switches” or similar modifications, including but not limited to documents related to the prevalence, use in crime or violence, or public safety impact of such converted Glock semiautomatic handguns;
- The design and development of Glock pistols with respect to their semiautomatic function, including but not limited to documents relating to their receptiveness to being made to function automatically, whether you took or considered action to reduce that receptiveness, or the possibility of design changes or alternatives;
- Your knowledge about all state and federal laws relating to Glock switches and converted Glock machine guns, your legal responsibility as a manufacturer of guns that can be converted using Glock switches, and whether or not you complied with such laws and upheld such responsibility;
- Financial information relating to Glock pistols, including profit, manufacturing costs, and distribution costs, as well as the costs of developing and/or implementing any alternative design choices that were available or considered; and
- Any public-facing marketing or advertising related to Glock pistols, including any representations about their supposed safety, lethality, modularity, semiautomaticfunction or the speed at which they fire.
It’s likely that other members of the anti-2A coalition of AGs will also file suit against the gunmaker, forcing them to defend themselves in multiple lawsuits (and expend a lot of money on legal fees in the process).
The allegations, however, likely run afoul of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. The gun control group Brady and some victims of the Poway synagogue shooting in California teamed up to sue Smith & Wesson, alleging in part that the semi-automatic rifle used by the shooter should be treated like a full-auto machine gun because it could be illegally modified to shoot full-auto, but a judge in San Diego recently dismissed the lawsuit by citing the PLCAA. When it came to Brady’s claims about the rifle’s convertability, Judge Wendy Behan noted, “The US Supreme Court recently held in Garland v. Cargill: “[s]emi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b).
While plaintiffs argue that modifications could make the rifle illegal, there is no evidence that the shooter intended to or did modify the firearm. Forty-year-old ATF agency interpretations relied upon by plaintiffs are not binding on this court and ultimately lack relevance due to the lack of ambiguity in the statutory definition of a machinegun, which excludes firearms not originally designed for automatic fire. The evidence remains undisputed that that Smith & Wesson “S&W” manufactured the rifle as a semiautomatic firearm, and the shooter used the rifle as a semi-automatic firearm.
And Glock manufactures its pistols as semi-automatic pistols (with the exception of the Glock 18, which is not available to consumers). The modification of these pistols is a federal crime, and gunmakers shouldn’t be held liable for the illegal conversion of their firearms any more than they should be deemed responsible for the criminal misuse of their products.
The gun control lobby has been pushing the ATF to reclassify Glocks (and other semi-automatic firearms) for several years, but that appears to have been a bridge too far even for Steve Dettelbach. With the Biden administration (and Dettelbach himself) preparing to exit stage left, the gun control groups and their allies like Ellison and Platkin have now decided that the best way to target the most popular handguns in the country is through civil lawsuits.
Like Chicago’s litigation, both lawsuits announced today demand Glock suspend sales of their semi-automatic handguns to civilians in New Jersey and Minnesota. The courts should quickly shut down this iattempt to ban commonly owned handguns through litigation, not legislation. If they allow these lawsuits to proceed, we can expect a full-scale effort on the part of the gun-grabbers to treat all semi-automatic firearms like machineguns despite what the Supreme Court has previously said.
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