Democrats’ “assault by a thousand cuts” on the Second Amendment continued earlier this month as Connecticut became the fourth state to ban Glock pistols. But as Democrats make firearms the enemy instead of the violent individuals who use them to commit crimes, it is inevitably only law-abiding, responsible gun owners who will suffer.
On June 5, Connecticut Democrat Governor Ned Lamont signed House Bill 5043 into law, officially titled “An Act Prohibiting the Manufacture and Sale of Convertible Pistols.” The legislation, which is set to go into full effect on October 1 of this year, will see the Nutmeg State join California, Maryland, and New York in banning Glock pistols – the most produced and widely used handgun platform in history.
For those who may not be up to speed, these laws are just the latest in a long line of efforts to curtail the rights of Americans to purchase and possess certain types of firearms. In this particular case, these laws target striker-fired semi-automatic pistols.
Proponents of the bans point out that criminals have found a way to convert these firearms to full-auto by employing a device that essentially functions as an auto-sear that replaces the factory backplate on the pistol’s slide. This is the so-called “Glock switch” that you may have heard about in the news.
Despite the fact that the original equipment manufacturers have produced perfectly legal gun designs that have been in circulation for decades (nearly a half-century for Glock’s basic operating action) several states have swiftly moved to ban the purchase and ownership of these firearms.
This all makes perfect sense to the gun control crowd – never mind the fact that the overwhelming majority of American Glock owners do not convert their pistols to full auto or use them to commit violent crimes. And never mind the fact that it violates every principle of free enterprise to use government bans to penalize a company for a user modifying or misusing a product that complies with every regulatory standard.
According to this logic, it would be acceptable to, for instance, outlaw Tide pods because a few idiotic individuals on social media started an asinine trend of eating them. It would also be acceptable to ban the sale of sports cars because some people use them for street racing, or to ban powerful computers because some people use them for hacking.
In the case of bans on Glocks and other similar handguns, these new prohibitions outlaw entire classes of some of the most commonly owned, popular, inexpensive, and reliable firearms in circulation. Americans own literally tens of millions of these guns. Even a ban on the sale of new Glocks won’t take any of those currently in circulation out of circulation.
Moreover, if we’re being honest, most of the criminals converting Glocks to full auto aren’t acquiring them legally anyway.
But gun control statutes do not start from positions of logic, reason, reality, or fair accountability. They start from either raw emotion or disingenuous and deceptive efforts to dismantle the Second Amendment piecemeal. Governor Lamont’s recent comments on the new law – the typical uninformed boilerplate liberal talking points – are indicative of this approach:
“Our gun violence prevention laws need to keep up with what’s going on in the world as far as it relates to emerging technologies and the development of weapons that enable criminals to easily circumvent these laws with the intention of inflicting mass harm. This is a commonsense law that prioritizes public safety while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners. With the lack of action on gun violence prevention measures being passed by Congress, it is up to the individual states to enact laws like these.”
Of course, Governor Lamont conveniently forgets that full-auto conversions are already a felony at the federal level. But who would anti-gun politicians be if they were actually serious about combatting gun crime by enforcing current laws with robust vigor and consistent, uniform application? It’s far easier to grandstand and issue a blanket ban than to actually do the hard work of arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning lawbreakers.
It’s sadly ironic that Connecticut – officially known as the “Constitution State” – has become one of the most ardently anti-gun states in the Union. This is particularly so given that the state has been the home to several of the biggest firearms companies in America – Colt, Winchester, Savage, Marlin, Mossberg, and Ruger to name a few, though Ruger has moved most of its facilities out of the state, including its corporate headquarters.
For gun owners, shooting sports enthusiasts, and champions of the Second Amendment, the burning question now is, “what happens next?” The answer is that, like a lot of firearms-related issues, ultimate adjudication will happen in the courts. As it stands today, multiple organizations have already filed suits in states with Glock bans in place. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has also indicated it will be bringing a legal challenge to Connecticut’s new law.
It seems that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) provides ample grounds to reverse these state-level gun bans, particularly given that the core issue in Heller was Washington, D.C.’s unconstitutional ban on handguns. The High Court specifically ruled that the Second Amendment protects “arms ‘in common use at the time’ for lawful purposes like self-defense” and arms that are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”
With tens of millions of Glock pistols and similar striker-fired semi-automatic pistols lawfully owned and ‘in common use’ by Americans, these Glock bans don’t appear to pass constitutional muster. Hopefully, we will see some firm and binding legal resolution regarding these arbitrary and unsound restrictions soon.
Connor Martin is a U.S. Marine and covers national policy issues.
