Automatic pistol found at Sacramento mass shooting. How did gun find its way to the streets?
A stolen handgun found Sunday amid the blood and bodies in the aftermath of Sacramento’s largest mass shooting had been converted to fully automatic, police announced Tuesday.
Police said the shooting, which left six people dead and a dozen wounded, appears to have been the result of a gang-related feud among people with lengthy criminal histories that would have prohibited them from owning guns, ammunition and magazines.
Investigators haven’t released any details about the weapons used in the shooting, other than to say that one of the handguns they recovered was stolen and had been “converted to a weapon capable of automatic gunfire.”
So-called “auto sear” kits used to modify weapons to become fully automatic are increasingly showing up in street crimes, including a gang shooting in Fresno in 2019 that killed four and wounded six. A fully automatic Glock handgun was used in the Fresno shooting. Two members of the boogaloo extremist movement charged in the 2020 murder of a guard at the federal courthouse in Oakland used similar illegally modified automatic weapons, according to an investigation published last month by The Trace and VICE News.
The news outlets found that federal prosecutions involving automatic weapons have spiked in recent years.
From 2017 to 2021, the number of cases jumped from 10 to 83, VICE and The Trace reported. The news outlets found at least 260 cases, including robberies, assaults, and murders, in which guns with the illegal conversion kits were used.
More than 1,000 of the devices were recovered.
“Auto sears are everywhere on the street right now,” Jeffrey Boshek, a 21-year ATF veteran, told VICE and The Trace. “They’re one of the scariest things we’ve dealt with since I became an agent.”
The federal government began cracking down on fully-automatic weapons in the Prohibition Era of the 1930s, at a time when the Thompson submachine gun known colloquially as “the Tommy Gun” or “Chicago Typewriter” became infamous for its use by mobsters.
In the decades since the National Firearms Act passed in 1934, only those who have special permits issued by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives can possess any fully automatic weapon. It’s even more difficult to own such a weapon in California.
California only has issued 106 so-called “dangerous weapons permits,” said Greg Block, a reserve police officer, based in Huntington Beach, who trains police agencies and others in firearms use.
“I have four of them,” he told The Sacramento Bee.
Of course, criminals who don’t have the permits can modify weapons to convert them to fully automatic or buy automatic weapons on the black market.
VICE and The Trace reported the parts that are used to convert weapons into fully auto are typically advertised online as airsoft parts or tools and shipped with false documentation and packaging labels. They can also be created using a 3D printer, the news outlets reported.
Fully automatic pistols difficult to use
Though they’re becoming increasingly common in gang warfare, automatic weapons are largely not used any more by law enforcement officers and members of the military because they’re unwieldy and inaccurate, said Mike Ramsey, a Sacramento-area firearms instructor.
In tense combat situations, fully automatic rifles fire too many rounds too quickly and indiscriminately, at a time when precision aiming is usually needed, Ramsey said.
“They’re very impractical,” Ramsey said. “Three seconds, 30 rounds are gone.”
Fully automatic handguns like the one found Sunday are even less practical, experts said.
A handgun is extended at arm’s reach, and doesn’t have a rifle stock that a shooter can snug up to his or her shoulder allowing the shooter to steady their aim and absorb the recoil from dozens of rounds going off in a matter of seconds.
With a machine pistol, the sort of high-capacity magazines necessary to fire off dozens of rounds in rapid bursts also make the gun heavy and difficult to hold steady.
Then there’s the recoil that comes with having a gun blast off potentially dozens of rounds in seconds in the palm of your hand.
“After a few rounds, that gun will be pointing straight up in the air because of the recoil,” said Sam Paredes, the executive director of Gun Owners of California, a group that lobbies for gun rights.
Ramsey said there’s only one reason why anyone would want to own a fully automatic handgun on the streets of Sacramento.
“They have it,” Ramsey said, “for intimidation.”
Was the fully automatic handgun used Sunday?
At The Bee’s request, three firearms experts reviewed footage from the shooting that bystanders captured with sounds of gunfire.
They said they didn’t hear the telltale rapid blasts of automatic gunfire.
“I doubt it based on the sound of the (gun shots),” Paredes said. “It did not sound like full auto.”
But even if it wasn’t fired, Paredes said he’s not particularly surprised to hear that investigators found an illegal automatic weapon at the shooting.
Paredes said the sorts of people behind the black market for illegal weapons have the cash and know-how to modify weapons and make their own ammunition.
Those guns then find their way down to the streets, Paredes said.
“We have grown to believe that the criminals are stupid,” Paredes said. “But they’re not dumb, or else we would catch them all, right?
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Automatic pistol found at Sacramento mass shooting. How did gun find its way to the streets?."