Glock does not manufacture or sell auto sears, which are illegal. The lawsuit claims that some auto sears are marketed and sold with Glock’s name and logo, but that there is no evidence Glock has tried to protect its trademark from third-party manufacturers.
What, I wonder, is one supposed to do to 'protect one's trademark' from criminal organizations carrying out illegal activity? Sue their nonexistent corporations over trademark violation? Have your lawyers send 'cease and desist' letters to their nonexistent address?
If you don't know what an auto sear is, the Post would also like to misinform you about that too.
Called “auto sears,” the metal or plastic pieces are fitted inside the firearms and can be purchased on the Internet or made on 3-D printers. They allow weapons to fire up to 1,200 bullets a minute.
It is absolutely not the case that you could fire 1,200 bullets in a minute using any Glock handgun, auto sear or not. Even if you managed to build a couple of magazines that held 600 bullets each, which would reach to the ground, you still couldn't do it. Heat issues alone would destroy the frame of the thing.
What you can do with an auto sear is fire 15 or 17 bullets at a cyclic rate of 1,200/minute. You won't hit anything you were aiming at, probably, but you can create an impressive display. That's really what the street gangsters are trying to accomplish; it's an elaborate sort of peacocking, dangerous mostly to innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood.
So they're a bad idea and you shouldn't install one. Should we ban them? We already did. Nobody's trying to repeal the ban. Chicago just wants to force Glock to spend a lot of money redesigning its whole line of products and then retooling its factories; it's just another attempt by people who oppose the Second Amendment to try to damage manufacturers of legal products that are normally used lawfully and responsibly.
I don't think the lawsuit's claim that Glock pistols are uniquely susceptible to these modifications is accurate. It is true that the Glock 18 is a select-fire weapon, manufactured for special police and military units in Europe. However, it's possible to generate automatic fire with a 1911 either intentionally or through accidentally bad gunsmithing. Semi-automatic weapons in general should be modifiable to perform automatic fire. Thus, one of the core claims of the lawsuit seems to be factually false -- and also the camel's nose, should the lawsuit succeed, in going after any other semiautomatic firearm manufacturer.
4 comments:
I believe that due to how a sear works, with wear they fail to full auto. Knew a guy with a high round count XD that was starting to double as a sign the sear was worn.
-stc Michael
Yes, that’s my understanding as well: that actually the hard part from an engineering perspective is making it semi automatic. Fully automatic is simpler. What these illegal “switches” are doing is bypassing the manufacturer’s design that intentionally limits the rate of fire.
Chicago just wants to force Glock to spend a lot of money redesigning its whole line of products and then retooling its factories....
Which would, were this to become precedent, create a never ending cycle of redesign and factory retool for all weapons manufacturers. It's just too easy to modify a semi-auto weapon to fire in full auto.
It also would be a precedent easily extendable to manufacturers of any other product that a government functionary might choose to dislike.
Eric Hines
E Hines- "It also would be a precedent easily extendable to manufacturers of any other product that a government functionary might choose to dislike."
IIRC, this tactic is already employed widely- - the firearms industry has specific exemptions to this in the law, as "consumer safety" was correctly seen as a lever against them.
Post a Comment