Feds fight surge in self-crafted machine guns like the one that killed deputy
EVANS, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Federal agents are battling a growing problem: the conversion of guns into automatic weapons like the one James Blake Montgomery used to kill a deputy in Columbia County.
From 2011 to 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives saw a 570% increase in the number of these weapons seized. They made up 55% of ATF weapon seizures – the biggest category – between 2017 and 2021.
And that’s part of why Montgomery was on the law enforcement radar.
He was suspected of converting semi-automatic guns into fully automatic ones, as well as building pipe bombs and selling suppressors – also known as silencers.
That’s not why deputies pulled him over in an RV Saturday night – it was to serve a temporary protective order filed by his estranged wife.
But he used one of those converted guns, a 9 mm AR pistol, to kill Deputy Brandon Sikes and shoot Deputy Gavin White in the face.
The conversion can be done in 60 seconds with devices that are known as switches, chips or auto sears – often 3D-printed and hard to track.
Once converted, a gun can release all its ammunition with one pull of the trigger.
That may well have happened Saturday, because Montgomery sprayed the whole area with bullets, hitting not only the deputies but also shooting up patrol cars and flattening their tires.
The ATF says conversion devices are often billed as legal, but they’re not.
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“A conversion device just on its own is considered an illegal machine gun under federal law and cannot be possessed, even without a pistol or rifle,” the ATF says.
The ATF, which was among the agencies responding to Saturday’s shooting, sees conversions as an “emerging threat” proliferating because of inexpensive home 3D printers.
The same technology is also being used to illegally produce silencers, guns that can’t be detected by security devices, and components for explosive devices, ATF said in an overview of the agency produced for the presidential transition.
To fight these problems, ATF is asking for a $250 million budget increase.
Illegal conversion devices aren’t the only reason ATF might be interested in Montgomery.
He was building pipe bombs – one of his interests since he was a child, according to his family.
Once Montgomery was found dead in his RV, it yielded a pipe bomb that could be remotely detonated along with other explosives paraphernalia, all situated just above several propane tanks on the underside of the RV.
His family said they’d in an internal memo.
His estranged wife told deputies she was concerned because he had guns and was acting “very erratic” – which is part of why she filed the protective order deputies were trying to serve him with.
Investigators will determine how and why Saturday’s traffic stop turned into a bloodbath, and whether Montgomery died by his own hand or from gunfire returned by other lawmen.
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