What Are Weapon Modifications?
Rapid gunfire has devastating consequences in tragedies across the country. Sadly, we have seen it. At Sandy Hook Elementary School, 154 shots were fired in less than five minutes.
Some accessories are designed to make guns fire much faster than they were originally intended to. When added to a semi-automatic weapon, these attachments significantly increase the rate of fire. This reduces pauses between shots and limits opportunities for people to escape, intervene, or provide aid.
What Makes Weapon Modifications So Dangerous?
Firearms discharging rounds at this speed make shootings more lethal and increase the potential for mass casualties. Their easy accessibility contributes to their growing presence at crime scenes across the country. This intensifies community safety concerns and strains law enforcement resources. When these devices circulate among youth, the risk extends into schools, playgrounds, buses, and other community spaces where children should be safe. Understanding how these enhancements work, and the risks they pose, is an important step in helping policymakers, parents, and communities make informed decisions about safety.
What Are the Types of Weapon Modifications?
Also referred to as a “Glock switch” – an auto-sear is a small device often no larger than a coin. To enhance lethality, they can be added inside of a firearm to make it fire continuously with a single pull of the trigger.
Once installed, a firearm that normally fires one round per trigger essentially is converted into a machine gun. These attachments make it possible to fire hundreds of rounds per minute. Their small size and easy attachment make them easily concealed, carried, and shared, increasing the risk they end up in the hands of youth. They can also be 3D printed, which makes them easy to make and hard to track. This easy access makes them a popular choice for young people. Recent media reporting shows growing interest among teens and young people, including instances of auto-sears being displayed on social media or brought onto school campuses, dramatically increasing the risk of accidental or intentional harm.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, they are “devices that allow a semiautomatic firearm to shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger”. They are an external “add-on” to a semi-automatic firearm that makes it keep firing once the trigger is pulled. This makes their function nearly identical to machine guns, which fire repeatedly with one pull of the trigger by the shooter.
Read more about this weapon modification in our blog Should Bump Stocks Be Illegal?
A forced‑reset trigger is a type of weapon enhancement that goes inside of a firearm, replacing the regular trigger. Similar to a bump stock, it uses the firearm’s cycling action to push the trigger forward after each shot, resetting it quickly. The shooter still needs to activate the trigger for every round, but a forced reset trigger speeds up how quickly this can happen.
Related Issues
Background Checks
Expanded Background Checks are one of the most proven policies to prevent gun violence. When firearms are sold without background checks, our schools, communities, and public places are less safe.
Temporary Transfer
Temporary Transfer Orders, (i.e., Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) or “red flag laws”) empower family members, law enforcement, and other key individuals to respond to warning signs of potential violence or suicide.