CPRC: Only 43 Switch-Related Murders in 5 Years — It's a Pretext

Politicians and gun-control groups have weaponized the phrase 'Glock switch' for years, using it to justify bans on standard Glock-style pistols owned by millions of law-abiding Americans. The Crime Prevention Research Center just ran the numbers — and the panic is a fraud.

The CPRC conducted what it calls 'an exhaustive search' of incidents from 2021 through May 2026. The result: 20 incidents. 43 people killed. Over five-plus years. In a country that recorded more than 80,657 total murders from 2021 to 2024 alone.

That's 43 deaths out of 80,000. Less than 0.06 percent. Not a crisis — a talking point.

The federal government doesn't even maintain a database tracking switch-related murders. The CPRC built one from scratch, piecing together media reports and court records. If the problem were as catastrophic as Bloomberg-funded outlets claim, someone in Washington would have bothered to count the bodies by now.

Here's what the anti-gun lobby won't tell you: Glock switches are already illegal. They've been NFA-regulated machine gun conversion devices since 1986. Every single murder in the CPRC dataset was committed with a device that was already a federal felony to possess. No new law would have changed that. Criminals don't comply with laws — that's the definition of a criminal.

The CPRC also flags something tactically obvious that the panic merchants ignore: these devices are dangerous to the shooter. A full-auto handgun with an extreme cyclic rate is nearly impossible to control. Switches override the disconnector, allowing the gun to fire before it's fully locked — putting allies, bystanders, and the shooter himself at risk. The CPRC suggests this engineering liability may itself be suppressing wider use.

Machine pistols have been rejected by virtually every military in the world for exactly these reasons. A Glock switch doesn't make a criminal deadlier — it makes him less accurate and more likely to injure himself.

So why the hysteria? Look at New York, where Albany buried a 'convertible pistol' ban inside a budget bill — language broad enough to target standard Glocks and Sig P320s carried by millions of legal gun owners. The switch scare is the on-ramp to that destination. Manufacture a crisis around an already-illegal device, then use it to ban the legal platform underneath it.

The CPRC data rips that strategy apart. Gun owners need to hand this number to every legislator who invokes 'Glock switches' as a reason to restrict their rights: 43 murders. Five years. A country of 330 million people.

Share the CPRC study. Call your congressman. The next time a politician cites switches to justify banning your pistol, you have the receipts.