Homemade machine guns are a rising concern [Video]

This pistol spits like a rattlesnake.

It’s a handgun like any other, unless you count the plastic prop that’s been used to modify it. The street name for this little addition is a “Glock-switch” or “auto-sear.”

Its official name is “machine-gun conversion device,” which gives a pretty clear picture of what this sliver of plastic does.

By any name, switches are deadly, as ATF agents demonstrated for a reporter with The Times-Dispatch. They turn killing tools into weapons of war and drive up numbers of senseless woundings and killings across Virginia.

At the Richmond Police Department’s training facility, ATF officers fired both modified and unmodified Glock pistols at practice targets. 

A timer illustrates the change in rate of fire. A normal, semi-automatic pistol can fire 10 rounds in 2.61 seconds; as fast as the shooter can flex their trigger finger.