Connecticut’s “Convertible Pistol” Ban Picks up Where California’s Overreach Left Off

What the Second Amendment community has long known has become increasingly difficult for gun grabbers to deny: no handgun is safe from the prohibitionist agenda. In the past, gun control advocates were at least honest about their ambitions to ban all handguns. But as that goal became increasingly unpopular and legally problematic, they shifted to portraying certain guns as more scary and dangerous than others. This included targeting handguns based on their looks, their materials, their size, the presence or absence of various features, even their coloring, to name just a few examples. The latest evolution in this march back toward a general ban is to focus not on what a handgun actually is but on what it could become, if it were to fall into the wrong hands.

Earlier this month, Connecticut Governor Ted Lamont rolled out the East Coast version of the California Glock ban. Unsurprisingly, it is not an improvement. Governor’s Bill HB5043 would seek to penalize "any individual or any [other actor] that, within this state, distributes, transports or imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, any convertible pistol." The crime would be classified as a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a $5,000 fine.

Notably, it is already illegal to convert a pistol into an automatic firearm, and the devices to do so are already illegal in Connecticut. Thus, the relevant conduct and hardware are already covered by the law. What this latest legislation seeks to ban is the more metaphysical concept of potentiality.

“Precursor prohibitions” are one of the more recent developments in gun control. Lawsuits set the tone. Legislation then sought to implement the concept wherever the disdain for Second Amendment rights was at its zenith. Manufacturers of supposedly nonconforming handguns were directly threatened with consequences. The California Glock ban signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom last year escalated the trend. Specifically, the law, scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026, provided that licensed firearms dealers “shall not sell, offer for sale, exchange, give, transfer, or deliver any semiautomatic machinegun-convertible pistol.”

Two developments quickly followed the California law’s enactment. First, NRA filed a lawsuit challenging the California ban, along with Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and others. Second, Glock announced design changes to their pistols, although it denied the move was in response to the legislation.

Now, NRA is warily following developments in Connecticut. Legislators there would do well to read NRA’s complaint in the California case, Jaynes v. Bonta:

Textually, the right to “keep and bear” weapons includes the right to acquire them. As Heller has made clear, the only historical justification that could justify banning the possession of a firearm is that the arm is both “dangerous and unusual.” Arms that are “in common use” are, by definition, neither. Thus, in Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment “protects the possession and use of weapons that are ‘in common use at the time.’ A law that bans the sale of—and correspondingly prevents citizens from acquiring—a weapon in common use violates the Second Amendment.  Semiautomatic handguns with cruciform trigger bars are not different from any other type of semiautomatic handgun in a constitutionally relevant way. The Supreme Court has already held that handguns are in common use and cannot be banned. (“[H]andguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”).

California, Connecticut, and other states undoubtedly waiting in the wings cannot avoid this constitutional limitation by recharacterizing common firearms as merely the raw material for uncommon firearms. If they can do that, why could they not likewise try to enforce the claim that every law-abiding firearm owner is merely an armed criminal waiting to happen?

If that sounds preposterous, consider that the gun control agenda is almost wholly premised on targeting neutral conduct or technology in the absence of ill-intent, not the blatant acts of actual criminals. There is no obvious limit to the precursor mentality under which everything that could potentially lead to a firearm-related crime is more of a priority than fighting crime itself.