A news story gaining a lot of traction out of Alabama is bragging about a “rare bipartisan consensus” of mayors, lawmakers and legislators working together to “stem gun violence.”
According to a report at wfsa.com, this bipartisan coalition has “endorsed a public safety package on Thursday that would ban the devices that convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns—a rare consensus on gun restrictions and a departure from years of conflict about how to stem gun violence.”
Wow! At first blush, readers might think that there are some really important things going on in the Yellowhammer State.
“Even if there are some things we may not agree with, today is a major deal,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said after local law enforcement and leaders in both legislative chambers endorsed Gov. Kay Ivey’s public safety package.
However, a deeper look at that public safety package, particularly the section being touted in the news report, shows it’s just much ado about nothing. What it does is make possession of so-called “Glock switches” illegal in Alabama.
The “Glock switch,” or “Glock auto-sear,” is a piece of metal or plastic that can be used to illegally convert Glock pistols to fire full-auto, as opposed to the normal, as-manufactured-and-sold semi-auto function of the popular handguns. In a nutshell, a “Glock switch” is a small piece of metal or plastic that someone could make and illegally attach to the rear of the slide of a Glock to convert it to full-auto fire. The switch works by applying force to the trigger bar to prevent it from limiting fire to one round of ammunition per trigger pull.
The name is deliberately misleading because Glock does not manufacture the switches. Additionally, converting any firearm to fire fully automatic is a federal felony, and even possessing a “Glock switch” can result in a federal prison sentence of up to 10 years.
I guess what the Alabama proposal would actually do is make possessing a Glock switch even more illegal—call it, double-secret illegal—despite it already being a serious federal felony. That begs the question of why state officials are even pushing such a proposal.
The same can be said about many other states, too, that have gone to the trouble to “re-ban” the devices.
While the proposed Alabama ban won’t accomplish anything, I believe it actually gives cover to both Democrats and Republicans. Democrat politicians can say they “are doing something” about the violent crime problem, thereby keeping anti-gun donor dollars coming into their reelection campaigns. Conversely, if questioned by constituents for supporting an anti-gun measure, Republicans can say since the device was already banned federally they didn’t really infringe on anybody’s rights under the Second Amendment.
While that might seem to be a cynical take on the matter, it’s hard to see what else could be gained by passing such a law. However, with two recent court rulings that found the ban on machine gun ownership to be unconstitutional, “Glock switch” bans might be even less relevant.
In August 2024, a federal judge in Wichita, Kansas, ruled that the federal law tightly regulating the ownership and transfer of full-auto firearms is unconstitutional under the 2022 Bruen decision. And, in January, a U.S. district judge in Mississippi also ruled that the federal law effectively banning the sale and possession of newly produced or unregistered machine guns was unconstitutional.
