The city of Baltimore, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and others filed suit Wednesday against gun manufacturer Glock Inc., for allegedly “facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns” across the region, Brown’s office said in a news release.

The plaintiffs allege that the company has endangered public health and safety in Maryland by manufacturing and selling “semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear — a cheap, small device commonly known as a ‘Glock switch‘,” the release states.

The switches make a handgun fully automatic and are increasingly common on Baltimore’s streets, The Banner has reported.

The plaintiffs allege, according to the news release, that the company has failed to implement “reasonable controls” to prevent unlawful possession and use of its semiautomatic pistols.

Everytown Law, which is affiliated with the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, and Motley Rice LLC joined the city and state in filing the lawsuit in Circuit Court of Maryland for Baltimore City.

Brown’s office said the suit is the first to use Maryland’s new Gun Industry Accountability Act. The law, passed and signed in 2024, makes industry members liable when they don’t take reasonable precautions to keep firearms out of the wrong hands.

“We will not allow the gun industry to turn a blind eye to grieving families and pursue profit over people’s lives,” Brown states in the news release. “It is unacceptable for companies to distribute and market a product that they know can easily be modified to inflict terror on communities across Maryland.”

According to the lawsuit, the Baltimore Police Department recovered at least 100 Glock pistols that were illegally modified to fire automatically in 2023 and 2024. The guns were found at crime scenes and in connection with criminal investigations, and about half of those arrested in connection with incidents involving illegally modified Glocks were under the age of 21, according to the lawsuit.

“Confronting the epidemic of gun violence in our communities means holding everyone responsible,” Mayor Brandon M. Scott said in the news release, “from those pulling the trigger to those making it easier to access — and modify — weapons.”

A gun with a Glock switch was used in an October 2023 shooting on Morgan State University’s campus that injured five people.

The plaintiffs are seeking an order that prohibits Glock from selling easily modified pistols to Marylanders. They also are seeking relief in the form of restitution and abatement, according to the news release.

Glock did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The Austrian gun manufacturer does not make the switches used to modify its semiautomatic pistols, but they can be found online and even 3-D printed. Such auto-sears are illegal to possess in the U.S.

The company maintained in response to a similar suit filed by Chicago officials last year that it could not be held liable for third-party actions and was protected by a 2005 federal law that largely shields gun manufacturers from liability, according to The Washington Post.