Machine gun possession charges spike in Marion County
INDIANAPOLIS — Marion County is seeing an alarming spike in the number of charges against people for possession of a machine gun.
I-Team 8 investigated dangerous machine gun conversion devices when the Indiana legislature criminalized them in the spring. Since 2020, the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office says they’ve seen a 5600% increase in the number of cases linked to these devices.
A machine gun conversion device turns a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic machine gun.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms gave I-Team 8 a video of a modified handgun spraying 10 rounds in just over a second.
“When you see those videos, you think to yourself, ‘We have to do something,’” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.
“(This is the) reality of police work. These are the dangers our officers face every single day. They’re more dangerous than other guns because they fire off numerous rounds. They’re more difficult to control, which results in these bullets going anywhere and reaching targets that are completely unintended,” Lt. Shane Foley of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said.
In 2020, the Marion County Prosecutors Office had one case with charges related to machine gun conversion devices. In 2021, they had 10, and in 2022, they had 47.
So far in 2023, they have 57. “We’re going to continue to see these numbers increase,” said Mears.
When I-Team 8 asked where these cases fell on Mears’ list of priorities, he said, “It’s at the top of the list.”
The increase in the number of cases can partially be attributed to the new law in Indiana that went into effect in April, which criminalized the conversion device itself. Before the new law, the device was only illegal if it was attached to a gun.
“Before, there were times when we found 40-plus devices at one time, and there was little that we could do. Now that we know that we can get these devices off the street, we can make the community safer,” said Foley.
“In a lot of these cases, we are seeing them as more stand-alone possession cases, where we are catching someone before they are being used,” said Mears.
Many cases the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office is prosecuting involve younger people.
“The last thing we need is young people with automatic weapons in our streets,” said Mears. Mears also says that the numbers are expected to increase throughout the end of the year.