Eleven-year-old Domonic Davis was not far from his mom\u2019s Cincinnati home when a hail of gunfire sprayed out from a passing car. Nearly two dozen rounds hurtled through the night at a group of children in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four other children and a woman were hurt in the November shooting<\/a> that killed Domonic, who had just made his school basketball team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat happened? How does this happen to an 11-year-old? He was only a few doors down,\u201d his father, Issac Davis<\/a>, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shooting remains under investigation. But federal investigators believe the 22 shots could be fired off with lightning speed because the weapon had been illegally converted to fire like a machine gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence,<\/a> police and federal authorities said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPolice officers are facing down fully automatic weapon fire in amounts that haven\u2019t existed in this country since the days of Al Capone and the Tommy gun,\u201d said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party<\/a> in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California<\/a>, in 2022. In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey<\/a> died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities such as Indianapolis, police have seized them every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They\u2019re also quick to install.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once in place, they modify the gun\u2019s machinery. Instead of firing one round each time the shooter squeezes the trigger, a semi-automatic weapon with a conversion device starts firing as soon as the trigger goes down and doesn\u2019t stop until the shooter lets go or the weapon runs out of ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re seeing them a lot in stunning numbers, particularly in street violence,\u201d said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a demonstration by ATF agents, the firing of a semi-automatic outfitted with a conversion device was nearly indistinguishable from an automatic weapon. Conversion devices with differing designs can fit a range of different guns, enabling guns to fire at a rate of 800 or more bullets per minute, according to the ATF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,\u201d Dettelbach said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 2012 and 2016, police departments in the U.S. found 814 conversion devices and sent them to the ATF. That number grew to more than 5,400 between 2017 and 2021, according to the agency\u2019s most recent data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They took hold in Minneapolis in 2021, and helped fuel record-breaking gun violence that year, said police Chief Brian O\u2019Hara. Along with spraying out bullets at a dizzying speed, switches make a gun much more difficult for the shooter to control, so more people can be hit by accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe thing is shaking as it\u2019s firing, so we wind up getting multiple victims, people hit in extremities during the same shooting incident, because the person cannot control the weapon,\u201d O\u2019Hara said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The city has seen a decline in their use since the September 2022 arrest of a man charged with selling switches that he had ordered from Russia and Taiwan or made himself, O\u2019Hara said. But \u201cit\u2019s still a very, very real problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is having a really deep impact on families, on neighborhoods and communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the devices are considered illegal machine guns under federal law, many states don\u2019t have their own specific laws against them. In Indiana, police were finding them so often \u2014 multiple times a week in the state\u2019s capital \u2014 that the state changed the law<\/a> to ensure it included switches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have to update the laws regarding machine guns to deal with the problems of today,\u201d Indianapolis police Chief Chris Bailey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only 15 states have their own laws against the possession, sale or manufacture of automatic-fire weapons, according to Giffords. Indiana was one of many states that have regulations with exceptions. Five states have no state-level machine-gun regulations at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But long before any prosecution, police have to find the conversion devices. Often about the size of a quarter, they can easily go unnoticed by the untrained eye after being installed, said Dettelbach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He recalled visiting a Texas police department after the ATF hosted a training on conversion devices. Afterwards, the chief searched the weapons in the evidence room and found several with previously undetected conversion devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese items don\u2019t always look as dangerous as they are,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you see some of them, they\u2019re pieces of plastic and metal, and sometimes it\u2019s even hard to recognize them when they\u2019re actually on or in the firearm because they blend in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re also increasingly a fixture online, in social media and rap lyrics, Davis said. \u201cEveryone is talking about switches,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a scary trend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Davis struggles to talk about the loss of his son. Domonic would often come with his dad on Fridays to get a haircut at the barber shop where Issac Davis works. The shooting also fell on a Friday, making the end of the week an especially tough time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Davis hopes to start a foundation called For Every Eleven to fight gun violence and honor his son\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI still want to keep his name going,\u201d he said. \u201cHe deserved to be still relevant. So I have to keep going. No matter how much grief I grieve him in private.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n