ARLINGTON, Texas — A man who got caught with a machine gun converter device for his pistol has been convicted on a gun charge in a Fort Worth federal court, officials announced.
Keidric Brown, 25, was found guilty of possessing a machine gun, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. He faces up to 10 years in prison.
Officials said an Arlington police officer pulled Brown over on Jan. 17 after seeing that his insurance had expired.
The officer then "noted the smell of marijuana" and began searching Brown's car, the news release said.
As she searched the car, she found a Glock 9mm pistol under the driver's seat. The gun had a 31-round high-capacity magazine with a red plastic switch attached to the back of the gun's slide, officials said.
When the gun was tested by an officer with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the officer "concluded it was a machine gun that fired in a fully-automatic fashion," the news release said.
Federal law classifies switch-equipped Glocks as machine guns, which are mostly banned for civilians under the National Firearms Act.
Investigators also searched Brown's phone, finding texts about the purchase of a Glock switch.
During Brown's trial, prosecutors played one of the rap videos he released under his Yung 6lount moniker, which contained lyrics about "My Glock, it came with a switch" and "I aim, I don't miss," the news release said.
Judge Reed O'Connor found Brown guilty in a bench trial. Brown's sentencing date has not been announced.
“I cannot stress enough how dangerous machine gun conversion devices are and the levels at which they are being used in our communities," said Jeffrey C. Boshek II, the ATF's Dallas Field Division's special agent in charge.
Boshek earlier this month told WFAA that the rise of machine gun converters are "the scariest thing I've seen in my time as an ATF agent."
Boshek said the device kits can be imported from China and made at home in under an hour with a 3D printer.
The device makes a gun unstable so that even trained ATF SWAT members have trouble controlling it. Boshek said a suspect firing one into a crowd sends bullets flying everywhere, and that scenario happened recently in a shooting in Deep Ellum in May. Five people were shot, and some of them were innocent bystanders.
"It makes it a fully automatic machine gun," Boshek said. "So, instead of pulling the trigger once for each shot, you hold the trigger once and the whole magazine will go out."
