Seattle sues WA gun stores over sale of Glock converters
Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison is filing suit against the firearm manufacturing company Glock and several Western Washington gun stores, saying they have contributed to “flooding the Seattle-area market with pistols that can be easily converted into illegal machine guns.”
“We can’t do it alone; we need Glock to help with this problem to see a reduction in gun violence and the use of their weapons in this format,” Davison said.
Davison says it’s a design specific to Glock’s pistols that makes them easily converted to an automatic weapon. The suit cites several online posts showing how people can modify the guns, either with relatively cheap parts sold on certain websites or 3D-printed plastic.
Davison points to several recent criminal investigations that found modified guns, including the mass shooting in Pioneer Square in May.
“We are finding that a lot of juveniles have these modified Glocks with those switches, and to me that’s very scary,” Davison says.
The suit aims to declare the sale of a Glock pistol as a public nuisance in order to prevent the future sale of the weapons. As advertised dealers of Glock guns, Bull’s Eye Indoor Range in Tacoma, Rainier Arms LLC in Auburn, and Pantel Tactical in Renton were named in the suit.
“[The stores are] an extension. That’s how [Glock’s] product is put into our market, through those authorized dealers. Otherwise, Glock couldn’t get their products into our market.“
Bull’s Eye and Rainier Arms told KIRO 7 they are not commenting on the pending litigation. The owner of Pantel Tactical said he plans to fight the lawsuit, saying that he’s never sold or shown a customer how to modify a gun, showing KIRO the signs he has in the entrance of his business from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms detailing how modifying guns in such a way is illegal.
“They are lawful gun owners, right? They should not want to see a weapon used in this way, causing so much damage. Of course, we want to hold people criminally accountable when they do those things, but this is additional,” Davison said.
Davison points to how many shots are being fired in shootings as further evidence that modified pistols from Glock are being used with more frequency, saying that in 2020, Seattle Police recovered 2,514 casings from shootings. In 2023, 5,746 casings were recovered.
“I think we would go back to a time when we didn’t have 90 shots fired. Again, that is not what we had historically. As a society, we didn’t have that many gunshots. Really, it puts all of us at risk. We’re all in the line of fire,” Davison said.
Glock did not respond to a request for comment on this story.