FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – The Fort Wayne Police Department is noticing a steady increase in the use of auto sears or switches, particularly among juveniles. The auto sear is a device that converts semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic machine guns. On Monday, WANE 15 spoke with Sgt. Marc Deshaies, who said that Fort Wayne is following a larger, national trend in the popularity of these devices. The conversation stemmed from a juvenile shooting on Friday that resulted in the arrest of a 15-year-old and the confiscation of three firearms. One of the firearms had an auto sear attached. Deshaies also mentioned that the same gun modification was used in a shooting of a FWPD officer in October. These auto sears also known as machine gun conversion devices or MCD's are illegal per Indiana and federal law, but the United States permits private ownership of machine guns through the Alcohol Tobacco Firearms Division. "You can own a machine gun as long as it was manufactured before May of 1986," said Deshaies. This makes them collectors' items. This means that there are very few legally owned machine guns on the street. The MCD's allow people to convert firearms such as Glock handguns and AR platform rifles into fully automatic weapons, illegally, with very few parts. Deshaies says that modern technology, like 3-D printers and the internet, has made the devices more accessible to young people. The MCD's are capable of firing hundreds of rounds per second, making them particularly dangerous in the hands of young people. "Whenever we talk about juvenile violence, we have to remember that the juvenile has not reached that level of maturity yet to rationalize the situation," said Deshaies. "Whenever you inject a firearm into an irrational person what happens is you create the availability of an immediate response that's lethal for what might be a perceived threat that is very minor. "And so juvenile violence when they have higher exposure to firearms, we see high levels of violence because they're just not rational enough to make a decision like that, that is permanent." said Deshaies. Deshaies explained that these devices only increase the problem by giving juveniles a deadlier weapon, one trigger pull now releases thousands of bullets in one minute. "That is a huge amount of violence being injected into the community," said Deshaies.