According to authorities, the gunmen who opened fire outside a popular hookah bar on Saturday night may have used weapons with an illegal “switch” that allowed them to fire in fully automatic mode — maximising the number of casualties.
Police said the gunmen had located their sole target, standing outside a nightclub. Sprinkled pills The location is located on a busy street filled with bars and restaurants, popular with college students, and just a few blocks from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“They were in a vehicle, got out of the vehicle, shots were fired, they fled in the vehicle,” Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurman told reporters.
The shooting was brief, but police found more than 100 spent cartridges at the scene. Police believe at least one of the weapons was fitted with a “Glock switch,” allowing the handgun to fire on full automatic. According to WVTM-TV,
Machine guns and other fully automatic weapons are illegal in the US — with a few exceptions that require onerous federal licensing.
However, Mayor Randall Woodfin told reporters that these illegal conversations have become a scourge on Birmingham's streets.
“There's a certain element in this community that's very comfortable walking around with semiautomatic weapons, automatic weapons, convergent switches and all those other things whose sole purpose is to cause people harm,” Woodfin said.
The gunmen's goal was to stand outside the Hush Cigar and Hookah Lounge, a basement club that often has a long line of people waiting to get in. It is located in Birmingham's Five Points neighborhood, a trendy location popular with university students.
This is the third quadruple homicide this year in Birmingham. In July, four people were killed and nine others were injured in a drive-by shooting at an adult birthday party. The city had 135 murders in 2023, According to AL.com,
The killings came just hours after another shooting at a nightclub, though police say the two incidents are not connected.
No arrests have been made yet and the search for the gunmen continues.
