The City of Chicago filed a lawsuit against handgun maker Glock on March 19, 2024, claiming that the company is liable for the ease with which a “Glock switch” can be used to convert the semiautomatic handguns into full-auto.
The City of Chicago is partnering with Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety in the lawsuit.
A press release from the mayor’s press office indicated the lawsuit “reports that law enforcement personnel in Chicago have recovered over 1,100 Glocks that have been converted into illegal machine guns in the last two years alone in connection with a wide variety of crimes, including homicides, aggravated assaults, batteries, kidnappings, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings, and attempted robberies.”
The press release claims that the lawsuit “alleges that selling a weapon that can be so easily converted to an illegal machine gun and failing to take reasonable steps to prevent or mitigate the problem is an unfair business practice, is negligent, and creates, maintains, and contributes to a public nuisance.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) commented on the suit:
The City of Chicago is encountering a deadly new frontier in the gun violence plaguing our communities because of the increase of fully automatic Glocks on our streets. Selling firearms that can so easily be converted into automatic weapons makes heinous acts even more deadly, so we are doing everything we can in collaboration with others committed to ending gun violence to hold Glock accountable for putting profits over public safety.
The lawsuit against Glock is the first suit filed under Illinois’ Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, an Act signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) in 2023.
Chicago and Everytown point to China as one of the sources for “auto sears” — the central component of a “Glock switch” — but they do not explain the degree to which China is allegedly committed to saturating the United States with such switches.
On February 26, 2024, Breitbart News reported Peter Schweizer, in Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, revealed that Chinese companies, which are heavily regulated by the Chinese government, are flooding the United States with auto sear switches, small metal devices also known as “Glock switches,” that can convert handguns into machine guns. They are illegal for most gun owners in the United States, but are being shipped in boxes by the “thousands” from China.
The lawsuit is Chicago v. Glock in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, County Department — Chancery Division.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
