New Jersey sues Glock for allowing handguns to be turned into automatic weapons
Attorney General Matthew Platkin on Thursday unveiled the nation’s largest civil litigation case against the gun industry and said he will lead a coalition of 15 states representing more than 100 million Americans to hold the firearm industry accountable for breaking state laws.
“I’m steadfast in my commitment to ending the gun violence epidemic that has devastated too many New Jersey families and too many New Jersey communities,” he said. “We know we can stop this epidemic when we recognize and treat gun violence like the public health crisis that it is.”
The coalition includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.
The attorney general said these efforts are not to attack anyone’s second amendment rights but rather to “protect the lives of millions of adults and children in this country who deserve to live free of the fear of gun violence.”
Platkin said the coalition will hit the ground running because he, as well as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed lawsuits against the well-known gun company Glock alleging the handguns it makes can easily be configured to fire automatically as illegal machine guns by affixing an inexpensive add-on component commonly known as a “Glock switch.”
The suit calls for Glock to suspend sales of the switchable guns to the civilian market through Glock’s network of New Jersey dealers and seeks restitution for public harm.
Platkin said at the Thursday press conference that Glock has been aware of the ability to switch its handguns to semi-automatic weapons for a long time. Government officials and attorneys general have called for this to be fixed for decades, but Glock did not make any changes.
“With this lawsuit, we are putting the homemade machine gun industry out of business,” Platkin said. “For decades, Glock has knowingly sold weapons that anyone with a screwdriver and a YouTube video can convert into a military-grade machine gun in a matter of minutes.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ sues Glock over handgun conversion switches
