Glock never should have felt obligated to change its proven design, just to appease anti-gunners who sought to blame the company for people taking a third-party manufactured device, applying it illegally to Glock handguns, then causing problems.
Yet that's what happened. A lot of people are displeased about it, too, feeling like Glock caved when they should have fought.
Regardless, though, the anti-gunners at Everytown for Gun Safety in America made it clear they were never going to just stop at Glock. Now, they're trying to make Ruger do the same.
Everytown for Gun Safety has now set its sights on Sturm, Ruger & Co., calling on the American gunmaker to stop producing its new RXM pistol, just weeks after Glock announced plans to discontinue several of its most popular handguns amid ongoing lawsuits and legislative pressure from anti-gun activists.
In a letter sent on Monday, Everytown’s chief litigation counsel, Eric Tirschwell, told Ruger that the company should “put public safety first” by either removing the RXM pistol from the market or redesigning its internal trigger system. The group claims the RXM shares a trigger mechanism similar to Glock’s so-called “cruciform” design; a part that Everytown argues makes both brands’ pistols vulnerable to illegal modification with so-called switches or auto sears.
“Ruger faces a choice following Glock’s recent announcement,” Tirschwell wrote. “Will it continue to sell the RXM despite the evidence of its ease of convertibility to an illegal machine gun, or will it put public safety first?”
The letter comes on the heels of Everytown claiming credit for Glock’s production changes, describing them as a “major victory” for gun control efforts. The group says it intends to apply similar pressure to Ruger, one of the nation’s largest firearms manufacturers, if the company doesn’t comply with its demands.
Ruger has not publicly responded to the letter.
The problem is that if Ruger capitulates, it'll just encourage them to try it with someone else.
It's only a matter of time before this whole "blame companies for having designs others figured out how to modify" gets directed toward the ever-hated AR-15 type rifles.
Those, too, can be modified to fire full-auto with the inclusion of a simple device. It's illegal to do so under current law, and it's illegal to even have the device. The rifle itself wasn't meant to work with such a device, but the device was designed around the system itself. While it's not making headlines like the so-called Glock switches did, they're still out there.
And since anti-gunners already want to ban AR-15s anyway, it's just a matter of time before they latch onto this and try to force the issue.
Of course, if Ruger doesn't bend the knee, then they'll try to legislate away Ruger's ability to sell these firearms in anti-gun states and sue them into oblivion for not making modifications. There aren't a lot of ways for Ruger to win here, unfortunately, unless they're ready to not just hold the line, but to fight back as aggressively as they can.
Just know one thing. No matter what they say they want, it'll never be enough.