Four states have now banned a handgun that most of their own police officers carry on duty. Sit with that for a second.
The target is the “convertible pistol,” which is legislative shorthand for the Glock and the various “not Glocks” (my term for 3rd party guns that are basically a Glock). California, New York, Maryland, and Connecticut all have versions of this ban on the books for 2026. Illinois took a swing and missed, for this session anyway. New Jersey is coming at the same goal from a completely different direction. We walked through the whole pileup on the podcast in an episode we called The Glock Wars, and the name fits.
Here is what these laws actually do, why the logic falls apart the moment you poke at it, and why I think the courts are going to hand most of it right back.
What a “Convertible Pistol” Actually Means
None of these bills say the word “Glock.” They do not have to.
The laws target any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar, the cross-shaped part Glock and Glock-pattern pistols use. The theory is that a cruciform trigger bar pairs easily with an illegal auto sear, the device everybody calls a Glock switch, and turns the pistol into a “machine gun” with no real gunsmithing involved.
The Switch Is Already a Federal Crime
This is the part that should bother you whether you own a Glock or not.
The Glock switch is already illegal. Making, possessing, or installing one is a federal felony under the National Firearms Act, with penalties running up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $250,000. State law bans the devices too. The criminal bolting one onto a stolen pistol is already looking at serious time before he ever pulls the trigger.
So these new laws do not close a gap. The conduct everyone claims to be worried about was already a felony twice over. What the bans actually do is reach past the criminal, who does not care about another statute, and land on the law-abiding buyer who just wants a reliable, widely sold handgun to protect his family. SAF’s Adam Kraut put it about as plainly as it can be put, calling the approach as foolish as banning hops and barley to prevent drunk driving. That lands because it is exactly right.
Where Things Stand, State by State
This moved fast, and the details matter, so here is the rundown as it sits right now.
California
California went first. AB 1127 bars licensed dealers from selling or transferring “semiautomatic machinegun-convertible pistols,” and it takes effect July 1, 2026. The NRA sued, and that case is already being litigated. Every state that followed used California’s template.
New York
New York buried its ban inside the state budget. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed S.9005C on May 27, and the language sweeps in any pistol with a cruciform trigger bar, banned whether or not a conversion device is ever installed or even possessed. The same bill piled on 3D-printing restrictions, including criminal exposure for simply possessing certain digital files. Tucking a gun ban into an all-or-nothing budget bill is not an accident. It is how you pass something divisive without an honest floor fight.
Maryland
Maryland’s SB 334, sponsored by state Sen. Sara Love, was signed by Gov. Wes Moore on May 26. The law takes formal effect October 1, 2026, with the sales and transfer ban kicking in January 1, 2027. It defines a “machine gun convertible pistol” as a semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar that can be readily converted by hand or common household tools, which in practice means nearly every Glock and Glock-style pistol, plus guns like the Palmetto State Armory Dagger, the Ruger RXM, and many Shadow Systems models. Current owners keep what they have. They just cannot buy, sell, or transfer one going forward, outside a short list of exceptions. A violation is a misdemeanor carrying up to three years and a $5,000 fine.
Connecticut
Connecticut’s version became Public Act 26-41, signed by Gov. Ned Lamont in late May. It makes selling, importing, distributing, or advertising a convertible pistol a Class D felony, up to five years in prison, effective October 1, 2026. It does not criminalize guns already owned, but it shuts off future sales of an entire class of handgun. Connecticut buyers saw it coming and cleared shelves of striker-fired pistols before the cutoff, which is what these bans reliably produce.
Illinois
Illinois is the one that got away, at least for now. HB 4471, the Responsible Gun Manufacturing Act from Rep. Justin Slaughter, cleared a House committee 9 to 5 on a party-line vote and became eligible for a floor vote. Then it ran out of road. When the General Assembly adjourned sine die on June 1, the bill had not passed, so it is dead for the spring session. The version that stalled would have banned manufacture and FFL sale or transfer while leaving possession untouched, with civil penalties starting at $10,000. Do not get comfortable, though. Lawmakers head back to Springfield for a fall veto session, and a bill like this rarely stays buried.
New Jersey
New Jersey is running a different play entirely. Rather than ban the gun outright, the state is using a lawsuit against Glock and a subpoena for dealer records to assemble a list of everyone who has bought one of these pistols since 2016. Call it what it is. That is a registry, built sideways, of the kind politicians have spent years insisting they did not want.
The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About
Every one of these laws carves out the police.
Maryland’s ban exempts active and retired law enforcement and the military. NSSF pointed out that the prohibited pistols are the same general designs carried by the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department, and the Baltimore department backed the bill anyway. So the message from the state is that this handgun is too dangerous for you, the law-abiding citizen who has never hurt anyone, but perfectly appropriate for the officer standing next to you.
You cannot have it both ways. Either the Glock is a uniquely dangerous machine that no responsible person should own, in which case take it off the duty belt too, or it is a safe, reliable, common service pistol, in which case there is no honest reason the rest of us cannot buy one. The carve-out gives away the answer.
How Often Does This Actually Happen?
Here is where the whole justification gets thin.
The Crime Prevention Research Center, the outfit run by economist John Lott, did what it called an exhaustive search for murders committed with switch-equipped Glock-style guns from 2021 through May 2026. Its verified count came to roughly 40 killings across about 20 separate incidents over five-plus years. CPRC is careful to say it may have missed cases, and that is fair. But even rounding generously, that is a rounding error against the roughly 80,000 murders the country saw over a comparable window. By CPRC’s math, it works out to about five hundredths of one percent of all murders.
For a sense of scale, the National Weather Service counted 81 fatal lightning strikes since the start of 2021. More Americans were killed by lightning than by a Glock switch over the same stretch.
It gets worse for the policy. More than half of those switch cases involved just one or two victims, which means the killing almost certainly would have happened with an ordinary handgun anyway. A switch makes a pistol harder to aim and control, not deadlier in a targeted shooting. Lott’s point is one most shooters already understand from the range: full-auto out of a handgun is a way to miss faster, not a way to kill more people. You are not banning a capability that drives the body count. You are banning a gun.
Why the Courts Are Likely to Hand This Back
This is where I land on the optimistic side, and the reason is precedent.
In Heller, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot ban arms in common use for lawful purposes, and it struck down a handgun ban doing exactly that. Bruen reinforced it and told the lower courts to test gun laws against text, history, and tradition rather than whatever balancing test felt convenient. A striker-fired pistol is about as “in common use” as a firearm gets. An analysis of ATF data puts Glocks alone at more than 10 million in American hands, and that is one brand. There is no serious argument that the most popular handgun design in the country is some unusual or dangerous outlier.
The lawsuits are already flying. The NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Firearms Policy Coalition sued Maryland the same day Moore signed, in a case styled National Rifle Association v. Moore in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, represented by Cooper & Kirk. California’s ban is in court. NSSF has promised to challenge Connecticut, and New York’s budget-bill ban is heading the same way.
I will keep tracking these cases as they move. This fight is far from over, and for once, the precedent is on the right side of it.
