Lamont Pushes Connecticut Ban on Machine Gun-Convertible Handguns

Gov. Ned Lamont wants Connecticut to become the second state in the country to ban the manufacture and sale of handguns that can be easily converted into illegal machine guns, pushing legislation he says will pressure firearms manufacturers to redesign their products rather than simply remove them from store shelves.

Lamont unveiled the proposal Monday alongside police chiefs and gun safety advocates, with West Hartford Police Chief Vernon Reddick hosting the press conference at his department’s headquarters. The governor framed the bill as a response to an increasingly accessible workaround: inexpensive after-market switches that can transform a standard striker-fired pistol into a fully automatic weapon small enough to conceal.

“These Glock-lock style switches are really dangerous. We got to work with the manufacturers to make them a little less easy to turn your pistol into a machine gun,” Lamont said.

The devices, widely known as “Glock switches,” already are illegal in Connecticut and most other states. But the governor argues that existing prohibition has not been enough. Hartford police seized 51 of the switches across 2023 and 2024. Reddick said his suburban department had recovered some as well. Law enforcement officials note the switches can be manufactured cheaply using a 3D printer, making them difficult to choke off through conventional enforcement.

The switches have been linked to deadly violence around the country. One was used in a shooting outside an Alabama bar that left four people dead and 17 wounded.

House Bill 5043 targets what the legislation defines as “convertible pistols,” specifically semiautomatic pistols with a cruciform trigger bar that can be modified into a machine gun using only hand pressure or a common household tool. The bill carves out exceptions for hammer-fired pistols and for striker-fired models with trigger bars shielded from the type of interference a converter requires. Neither Glock nor any other manufacturer is named in the bill’s text.

The distinction matters because striker-fired pistols, which use an internal spring-loaded firing pin rather than an external hammer, have become the dominant design in the modern handgun market. Glock popularized the format and holds enormous market share, which is partly why the conversion switches carry the brand’s name in common usage. Firearms literature offers mixed conclusions on whether Glocks are uniquely vulnerable to these conversions or simply ubiquitous enough that the name stuck.

California is currently the only state with a comparable ban on the books, and the Lamont administration is betting that Connecticut’s legislative action could build momentum elsewhere.

The proposal drew sharp opposition even before its public hearing before the Judiciary Committee, scheduled for Wednesday. Dozens of opponents submitted written testimony in advance, many of them arguing the bill’s language is too vague and its scope too broad.

Kyle Overturf, general manager of the Blue Trail Range in Wallingford, submitted testimony calling the bill poorly written and unnecessary. “The wording of the bill is ambiguous at best and could effectively ban nearly all modern semi-automatic pistols, not just Glocks,” Overturf wrote. Others in the gun trade echoed that concern, describing the bill as an overreach that would effectively pull widely owned and legally purchased firearms from Connecticut commerce.

Glock did not respond to a request for comment.

Lamont has been explicit that an outright market ban is not the goal. He wants manufacturers to engineer their pistols in ways that resist converter installation, shifting responsibility upstream to the companies that design and profit from the guns rather than leaving enforcement entirely to police recovering the devices after the fact.

That framing may matter politically. Connecticut has passed significant gun legislation in the years since the Sandy Hook massacre, building a regulatory record that gun safety advocates cite as a national model. Lamont’s push on convertible pistols follows that established pattern: identify a specific mechanism enabling violence, construct a targeted legal definition, and apply enough market pressure to change industry behavior.

Whether the Judiciary Committee advances the bill in its current form, or whether the definitional disputes raised by gun industry critics force revisions, will become clearer after Wednesday’s hearing.