Law enforcement agencies across the country, including in the District, are working to combat a dangerous trend of criminals using small devices that turn a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon.
In an interview with WTOP, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves expressed deep concerns over the number of gun conversion devices showing up on D.C. streets.
“It’s an incredibly serious problem right now. It’s something that’s relatively new that has exploded,” Graves said. “I’ve seen trained marksmen from 20 feet away try to fire one of the firearms that has a conversion device that’s changing the gun to do something that it is not designed to do.”
So far this year, more than 100 devices have been discovered by authorities in the District compared to just over two dozen in 2020.
“The firearms that are recovered with these conversion devices lead us to believe that people are getting these devices with bad intent,” Graves said.
“The concern is that innocent people are also inadvertent targets of those rounds,” said Craig Kailimai, the special agent in charge of the D.C. field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
He said the gun conversion devices are popular and becoming easier to get.
“When you have this conversion device put to it, that means you just hold the trigger down, and everything in that magazine is going to be fired in seconds,” Kailimai said.
“Some people can order these online. Social media has allowed people to figure out how to produce them (conversion guns),” Kailimai said.
Graves said tougher legislation needs to be in place to stop their proliferation.
“We are aggressively charging individuals when we find that they have these conversion devices,” he said.
