Rain of bullets: The rise of illegal homemade firearms fuels a new wave of gun violence

Four other children and a woman were injured in the November shooting that killed Domonic, who had just joined his school's basketball team.

“What happened? How does this happen to an 11-year-old? He was just a few doors down,” said his father, Isaac Davis.

The shooting remains under investigation. But federal investigators believe the 22 shots could have been fired at lightning speed because the weapon had been illegally converted to fire like a machine gun.

In recent years, American communities have witnessed shootings carried out with guns converted to automatic weapons, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to turn legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous weapons, helping fuel gun violence, police and prosecutors said. federal authorities.

“Police officers are facing automatic weapons fire on a scale not seen in this country since the days of Al Capone and the machine gun,” said Bureau of Alcohol Director Steve Dettelbach. , tobacco, firearms and explosives (ATF). “It’s a huge problem. »

The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.

Guns equipped with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four people dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead in a Sacramento, California, bar district in 2022. In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities like Indianapolis, police have been seizing them every week.

Devices to convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be built on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered online from overseas for less than $30. They are also quick to install.

Once in place, they modify the mechanism of the weapon. Instead of firing a bullet every time the shooter pulls the trigger, a semi-automatic weapon with a conversion device begins firing as soon as the trigger is pulled and only stops when the shooter releases the trigger or the weapon runs out of ammunition.

“We see them very often and in impressive numbers, particularly in street violence,” said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center.

During a demonstration by ATF agents, firing a semi-automatic equipped with a conversion device was virtually indistinguishable from an automatic weapon. The differently designed conversion devices can adapt to a range of different weapons, allowing those weapons to fire at a rate of 800 rounds or more per minute, according to the ATF.

“It takes two or three seconds to insert some of these devices into a firearm and instantly transform that firearm into a machine gun,” Dettelbach said.

Between 2012 and 2016, US law enforcement agencies discovered 814 conversion devices and sent them to the ATF. That number rose to more than 5,400 between 2017 and 2021, according to the agency's most recent data.

Guns were on the rise in Minneapolis in 2021 and helped fuel record gun violence that year, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. In addition to firing bullets at breakneck speeds, the switches make the weapon much harder for the shooter to control, meaning more people can be hit accidentally.

“The thing shakes while it's shooting, so we end up having multiple victims, people hit in the extremities during the same shooting incident, because the person can't control the gun,” O'Hara said.

The city has seen a decline in their use since the September 2022 arrest of a man accused of selling switches he ordered from Russia and Taiwan or made himself, Mr. O'Hara said . But “this remains a very, very real problem,” he said. “It has a very profound impact on families, neighborhoods and communities. »

Although these devices are considered illegal machine guns under federal law, many states don’t have their own specific laws against them. In Indiana, police were finding them so often — multiple times a week in the state capitol — that the state changed the law to ensure it included switches.

“We need to update the laws regarding machine guns to address today's issues,” Indianapolis Police Chief Chris Bailey said.

According to Giffords, only 15 states have their own laws prohibiting the possession, sale or manufacture of automatic firearms. Indiana was one of several states with regulations with exceptions. Five states have no statewide regulations on machine guns.

But long before any prosecution, the police must find the conversion devices. Often the size of a quarter, they can easily go unnoticed by the uninitiated after installation, Dettelbach said.

He recalls visiting a Texas police station after the ATF held a training session on conversion devices. The chief later searched the evidence room and found several weapons equipped with previously undetected conversion devices.

“These objects don't always look as dangerous as they are,” he said. “If you see some of them, they're pieces of plastic and metal, and sometimes it's hard to even recognize them when they're on or in the firearm because they blend in.”

They’re also increasingly present online, on social media and in rap lyrics, Davis said. “Everybody’s talking about switches,” he said. “It’s a scary trend.”

Davis has a hard time talking about the loss of his son. Domonic would often come with his father on Fridays to get his hair cut at the barbershop where Isaac Davis works. The shooting also happened on a Friday, making the end of the week especially difficult.

Davis hopes to start a foundation called For Every Eleven to combat gun violence and honor his son's memory.

“I still want his name to live on,” he said. “It deserved to still be relevant. So I must continue. No matter how much I grieve him in private.