from 3-d guns to glock switches 13
investigates ted oberg with a chilling
look at the carnage they can cause
dionne you need steph pattis houston
police as houston police officers were
serving a warrant on dion ledetta wanted
felon last september ladet fired
killing houston officer bill jeffrey in
a hail of bullets and instantly raising
the danger for officers all over houston
when people who knew officer jeffrey
heard that rapid gunfire they knew it
was no ordinary gun there was just
nothing those officers could do at that
scene it's heartbreaking and when fred
malinowski heard it
he had to do something when we find out
there's a full auto gun that did it
it's even more particularly for atf
it hits us even more in the heart police
say ledette fired from behind a wall
with a handgun illegally modified to
make it act like a machine gun it's a
glock 17
we're going to load it with a 30 round
magazine you saw one in action recently
at the atf office in houston
30 bullets
in 2.3 seconds in addition to officer
jeffrey's murder a houston woman was
allegedly killed by a shooter who had
one last april we found plenty of other
cases where cops found the illegal
devices in houston all of that even
before the shooting on houston's east
side thursday revealing just how
widespread these switches are
atf statistics from the houston area
alone show an explosion of the devices
on our streets three times as many cases
and seizure-wise
i think in in 2020 we seize around 33 of
these
and then 2020 only sees 145 of these
about three a week on average and those
are only the glock switches they're
finding fred malinowski the atf special
agent in charge of the houston division
tells us most of these devices are sold
online without serial numbers and
shipped ready to use
many offered on social media pages the
atf is working to shut down most
officers didn't know what they had
houston police officers tell the union
they'd seen the glock switches but
didn't know what they were at first
shooter's ready
since officer jeffrey's murder the atf
stepped up training local law
enforcement in some cases as easy as
showing officers what to look for every
time we put on that training
there's officers that tell us we came
across those and didn't know what they
were the device is an illegal
aftermarket add-on to the popular glock
handgun in all but very rare
circumstances having one could land you
in federal prison for 10 years
it takes seconds to clip on and allows
the gun to fire until it runs out of
bullets with a single trigger pull
without it clock pistols fire just one
bullet every time the trigger is pulled
these have inundated the market in the
last probably three months it's just
been incredible they're becoming more
and more prevalent and it's it's going
to cost people their lives seeing them
fired
is chilling it worries me but because
they're being manufactured illegally
there's not a lot that you can do to
prevent it saddle river range a licensed
gun dealer has a legal version available
for rent on site a rarity even among
firearms dealers this one was purchased
legally by a firearms dealer has a
serial number and is registered with the
federal government as a machine gun one
of the rare instances it can be legally
owned you have to work to keep the gun
down on target and shooting where you
want it and for an inexperienced
individual
they're not going to do that effectively
lean forward into it and to prove it
he let us shoot it
there is very little control
the gun moves up into the right
uncontrollably as it empties
making it incredibly dangerous and
lethal to both intended targets and any
innocent people nearby if a person
you know is intending to shoot at one
person and they can't control the gun
and there happens to be innocent
bystanders you know better chance of
they unfortunately getting hit just the
amount of lead you can put down range
right i mean
god forbid we have an active shooter
that has a fully automatic weapon
shooting into a crowd okay ted now while
you were briefing us yesterday on the
glock switches used in that shootout
with police they're in the third ward we
were actually getting comments from
viewers surprised at how easy they were
to find and actually buy one
yeah that's one of the biggest problems
that law enforcement has how easy they
are accessible on the internet look you
should know that they are absolutely
illegal and just buying one could earn
you 10 years in federal prison but yeah
we found websites the atf tells us
social media sites are selling them as
quickly as they find them they try and
shut them down the other thing and this
is possibly even more dangerous the
suspect yesterday roland caballero may
have been producing these with a 3d
printer absolutely untraceable and even
harder for law enforcement to track down
eric it is a huge job it certainly is a
lot of us had no idea about glock
switches ted we certainly do now great
work
thank you
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