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Nov 08, 2023

It’s Shockingly Easy To Buy Illegal Gun Modifiers On Instagram, Facebook And Twitter

Over a year ago, a police investigator in Garland, Texas, contacted his federal counterparts at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) over something disturbing: an Instagram user had

Over a year ago, a police investigator in Garland, Texas, contacted his federal counterparts at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) over something disturbing: an Instagram user had posted a picture of 16 “Glock switches” for sale. These small, Lego-sized devices act as a simple, but deadly – and illegal – add-on for the most popular handgun in America.

When installed onto a Glock, these mechanical switches quickly transform an ordinary handgun into a fully automatic weapon that can spray dozens of bullets in seconds, far faster than even typical military-issued firearms. Whether attached to a weapon or not, according to the ATF, these switches are illegal as they are “classified as a machine gun under federal law.” (In the United States, machine guns made after 1986 are illegal for civilians to possess.)

Before Meta removed it, this account openly advertised "G-Lock Switches," despite adding "nothing for sale."

They’re also openly for sale on mainstream social media platforms. Forbes has found at least 15 examples of people selling Glock switches and auto sears, a similar add-on for AR-15 assault rifles, on Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and Twitter. Three federal court cases refer to people selling Glock switches on Snap, though Forbes was not able to find any accounts actively advertising.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and Snap’s terms of service all forbid weapons transactions and any other criminal behavior on their platforms.

In recent years, law enforcement and prosecutors nationwide have observed an alarming trend: skyrocketing numbers of illegal switches, resulting in increased seizures and prosecutions of these devices. (Some have even brought cases involving “auto sears,” the counterpart device that turns an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic firearm.)

Last year, VICE News, and The Trace, an online investigative journalism website devoted to coverage of gun violence and the firearms industry, found that federal prosecutions involving such devices have jumped from 10 to 83 between 2017 and 2021.

Last Friday, after Forbes contacted Meta, informing the parent company of two Facebook groups that were openly selling Glock switches – located simply by searching for the phrase “Glock switch” – they were taken down.

“Following a review of the Facebook Groups and Instagram accounts flagged to us, we removed them for violating our Community Standards,” Ryan Daniels, a company spokesperson, emailed Forbes. Meta otherwise did not respond to questions sent by Forbes, instead pointing us to already public policies on the company’s website. Other groups on Facebook and Instagram remain active.

This is just another thing that my men and women have to face. The fact is, we are outgunned.

Twitter owner Elon Musk did not respond to Forbes' request for comment. Twitter’s email account for journalists auto-responded with a poop emoji.

In an emailed statement, Snap spokesperson Pete Boogaard wrote that selling weapons is “explicitly prohibited on Snapchat.”

“Our team quickly removes this type of content when it is discovered, and we take action against people who violate this policy, including potentially deleting their accounts,” he added.

Similarly, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn said the sale of weapons is not allowed, along with other types of “harmful content.”

“Moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring of public parts of our platform in addition to accepting user reports in order to remove such content,” he wrote in a Telegram message sent to Forbes.

Prosecutors and law enforcement told Forbes that they would like to see tech firms do more to mitigate harms emanating from the sales of such devices.

This account claimed to be the "most trusted" distributor of Glock switches in America.

“We need to make the platforms responsible,” Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia told Forbes. “This is just another thing that my men and women have to face. The fact is, we are outgunned. Dealing with the criminal element, we are outgunned. My officers don’t have Glock switches.”

Last December, Garcia said in an interview with Forbes that he and his colleagues at the ATF in the metropolitan area had seized nearly 800 such switches in 2022 alone. In an eight second video posted on Twitter, he demonstrated the destructive power of these devices and the risk that they pose to the civilian population and to his own officers.

Social media sites have long struggled to deal with open advertisement of firearms and related products. In 2016, Facebook banned gun and ammunition transactions on the site, but users quickly figured out how to circumvent the ban. Twitter officially bans “the promotion of weapons and weapon accessories” worldwide in paid advertisements. But Forbes found Twitter accounts that openly encouraged potential Glock switch buyers to get in touch: recently, one wrote “HMU fast free shipping.” Meanwhile, until it was recently removed, another Telegram account advertised itself as “the biggest and most trusted Glock Switch distro in the United States.”

Ted Matherly, a professor of marketing at Northeastern University, who has studied how firearms are sold, told Forbes that it should be relatively easy to block users from searching for “glock switch,” much in the same way that searching for illegal narcotics for sale also yields no results.

“To the extent that these things are known to be illegal, they have a clear mandate from society to help limit the proliferation of those things,” he said. “This is trivially easy to restrict.”

This account states it is a China-based vendor of Glock switches.

Sometimes, experts say, the switches are manufactured domestically, often via 3D printing, while in other instances they are imported, most often from China or the Philippines.

Two years ago, a Houston police officer was killed by a suspect who had such a switch on his handgun, but the proliferation of these devices continues to accelerate. Earlier this month, an Illinois man was indicted on federal charges, accused of importing 10 switches from China. Separately, a North Carolina man was sentenced this month to nearly three years in prison for possessing nearly 100 switches. Just last month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) reintroduced a bill that would require better federal coordination and enforcement on this issue.

David Chipman, who worked at the ATF for over 23 years, and now is on the board of directors at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group, said that social media companies need to do more to proactively detect such images and discussions.

“I think they have a responsibility to figure out a way to attack this issue,” he told Forbes. “I would challenge them in this case to do more.”

“They don’t want people getting shot up with devices bought on their platforms,” he added.