BALTIMORE, MD—Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, alongside Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and legal teams from Everytown Law and Motley Rice LLC, filed a lawsuit against Glock, Inc. and its parent company, Glock Ges.m.b.H., on Wednesday. The lawsuit alleges that the manufacturer of popular handguns is largely responsible for the proliferation of illegal machine guns in Baltimore and across Maryland.

The lawsuit claims Glock’s semiautomatic pistols are easily converted to illegal machine guns with a cheap tool called an auto sear, or “Glock switch.” This, the plaintiffs argue, makes Glock culpable for the rise in gun violence, particularly in Baltimore and among the state’s youth.

“We will not allow the gun industry to turn a blind eye to grieving families and pursue profit over people’s lives,” said Attorney General Brown. He emphasized the company’s responsibility for distributing a product they know can be easily modified to cause harm.

“Confronting the epidemic of gun violence in our communities means holding everyone responsible, from those pulling the trigger to those making it easier to access — and modify — weapons,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. “As we continue to achieve historic reductions of homicides and nonfatal shootings in Baltimore, we must continue to redouble our efforts to drive violence down even more. We’ve had significant success in litigation against manufacturers before, and I am confident that alongside our incredible partners Attorney General Brown and Everytown for Gun Safety, that this suit will be successful in holding Glock accountable for the deadly impact they’ve had on our neighborhoods.”

This lawsuit is the first to utilize Maryland’s new Gun Industry Accountability Act, passed in 2024. In July 2024, Everytown Law, the City of Chicago Law Department, and Motley Rice sued Glock for flooding Chicago with weapons easily converted to illegal automatics.

Data from the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) shows the severity of the issue. According to the lawsuit, at least 100 illegally modified Glock pistols were recovered at crime scenes and in criminal investigations between 2023 and 2024. The complaint alleges that the recovery of modified Glocks in Baltimore nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024. Furthermore, the lawsuit highlights the impact on young people, stating that roughly half of those arrested by BPD in connection with these modified weapons were under 21.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to stop Glock from selling these easily modifiable pistols to Maryland civilians. They are also seeking restitution and abatement for the damages caused by Glock’s alleged negligence.

“Glock’s role in facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns has been widely known, yet Glock has refused to take basic and meaningful steps to fix the problem,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.

This article was written with the assistance of AI and reviewed by a human editor.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels