(DCNF)—Pro-gun control politicians and activists have long focused on restricting so-called “assault weapons” that are labeled “weapons of war,” but lately they have set their sights on the country’s most popular handgun.
As of this writing, four states have passed laws banning the Glock pistol, with California being the first state to enact a ban on Glocks, declaring them “machine gun convertible pistols” when Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB1127 into law in October 2025, followed by Maryland, Connecticut and New York. For the last three and a half decades, anti-Second Amendment activists have primarily called for banning so-called “assault weapons” after the release of a 1988 study for New Right Watch by Josh Sugarmann, who later led the Violence Policy Center (VPC).
“Assault weapons… are a new topic,” Sugarmann wrote in the 1988 report. “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
Since 1989, 11 states and the District of Columbia have passed bans on modern semiautomatic firearms, according to the gun-control groups Everytown and Giffords, while Hawaii has banned so-called “assault pistols,” but has not legislated against modern semiautomatic rifles and shotguns.
The federal government also had a ban on the production and sale of modern semiautomatic firearms from September 1994 to September 2004, but the legislation lapsed and has not been enacted since. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas observed in a footnote from his dissent in Carhart v. Stenberg that the term “assault weapons” is a politically-motivated euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning semi-automatic firearms with features that give them a superficial similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation.
After the 2008 Heller decision stated that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own firearms, anti-Second Amendment politicians and activists still focused on banning so-called “assault weapons,” particularly after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Handguns, in general, were rarely, if ever, mentioned in public speeches and statements by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the wake of high-profile shootings and when pushing for gun control legislation, with Harris touting the fact she owned a Glock during the 2024 campaign.
With the first Trump administration, the legal ground shifted substantially, culminating in the 2022 Bruen decision, which invalidated New York’s “discretionary” system for issuing concealed carry permits. In addition to the Bruen ruling, The New York Times admitted in a May 13 article that both the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and semiautomatic rifles with cosmetic features or accessories that make them look like fully-automatic AK-47s were popular firearms among civilian buyers, which would likely result in outright bans being thrown out on Second Amendment grounds.
Normally, Glock pistols would also be easily protected under Heller and Bruen because they are widely recognized for their popularity with civilians and law-enforcement agencies in the United States and are frequently featured in rankings of top-selling firearms by publications such as Guns and Guns and Ammo magazine. However, the Heller decision did allow for the possibility that bans on “dangerous and unusual weapons” could pass constitutional muster.
This has been used by anti-Second Amendment groups and politicians to justify the legislation banning the pistols, as well as litigation targeting Glocks, over so-called “Glock switches,” which are devices used to illegally convert Glock pistols into fully-automatic weapons. A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland offered that rationale when the Daily Caller News Foundation asked for comment about litigation against Maryland’s ban in May.
“Governor Moore signed this bill because Marylanders should not have to live in fear of weapons that can be quickly and illegally converted into machine guns. Our responsibility is clear: protect families, support law enforcement, and keep dangerous weapons off our streets,” senior press secretary Ammar Moussa said.
Second Amendment Foundation President Massad Ayoob lit into the anti-Glock legislation, noting that strict restrictions on fully-automatic firearms dating back to the National Firearms Act have not deterred criminals.
“Criminals have been converting semiautomatic weapons to full auto for around a century or more,” Ayoob told the DCNF. “The Glock is the most popular handgun among both police and law-abiding citizens and banning them because of abuse of a tiny fraction of them is nothing less than ridiculous.”
Democratic Govs. Ned Lamont of Connecticut and Kathy Hochul of New York signed legislation targeting the Glock on May 27 and May 28, respectively, with the latter enacting the ban as aprt of a budget bill. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) announced plans to challenge Connecticut’s ban in court Thursday, hours after Lamont signed the bill.
“Instead of enforcing the law and holding these criminals accountable, Connecticut’s elected officials pander to gun control donors and antigun special interests to scapegoat the industry and ban an entire class of ordinary firearms, which the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision clearly holds violates the U.S. Constitution,” NSSF Senior Vice President & General Counsel Lawrence Keene said in the release. “Governor Lamont knew this yet didn’t hesitate to trample on the Second Amendment.”
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