Judge Blocks Connecticut Glock Ban

BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut — U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley on 30 September blocked Connecticut from enforcing a new state law that would have made it a felony to sell or keep for sale certain popular semiautomatic pistols the state calls “convertible,” hours before the ban was set to take effect on 1 October.

The law, House Bill 5043 / Public Act 26-41, targeted handguns with a cruciform trigger bar — a cross-shaped internal part that links the trigger to the firing pin. Connecticut argued those designs can be turned into fully automatic weapons with an illegal add-on known as a switch or pistol converter. Dooley’s twelve-page preliminary injunction covers consolidated suits by Glock, Inc. and by the National Shooting Sports Foundation with Shadow Systems LLC and Blue Trail Range Corporation.

A preliminary injunction is a temporary court order that keeps the status quo while a case continues. It is not a final ruling that the law is unconstitutional forever. Dooley found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits, that they faced irreparable harm if the ban took effect, and that the balance of equities and public interest favored a pause.

What the ban would have done

Under the statute, selling, importing, or keeping for sale a “convertible pistol” in Connecticut would have been a class D felony. The definition covered semiautomatic pistols with a cruciform trigger bar that can be readily converted into a machine gun by attaching a pistol converter with common tools, with limited carve-outs for hammer-fired pistols and some frames shielded from converters. Machine-gun conversion devices are already illegal under federal law; Connecticut’s theory was that the underlying pistol design itself should be kept out of commerce because criminals can misuse it later.

Glock and the industry groups argued that unconverted cruciform-trigger handguns are among the most common self-defense pistols in the United States, that they are used by Connecticut state troopers, and that banning a legal gun because someone else might illegally modify it would open the door to banning almost any semiautomatic firearm. Dooley wrote that there is no dispute the handguns, in an unconverted state, are safe and popular for self-defense and that their possession and carry rights are protected by the Second Amendment.

How the Second Amendment test worked

After the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, courts ask first whether a gun law implicates the Amendment’s plain text. If it does, the law is presumptively unconstitutional and the government must show the modern rule fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.

Connecticut accepted for the injunction motion that the ban implicated the Second Amendment’s text. It then pointed to founding-era “proving” laws — inspection and safety-stamp rules in states such as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts — plus the long tradition of restricting machine guns. Dooley held that proving laws were meant to make sure a gun was safe at the point of sale, not to stop predictable misuse after sale, and that on the present record they did not rebut the presumption of unconstitutionality when paired with machine-gun history.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the state disagrees and will keep defending the law. Similar convertible-pistol restrictions have been enacted in New York, Maryland, and California; those fights continue elsewhere.