New York lawmakers included a provision in this year’s state budget designed to crack down on handguns that criminals are converting to automatic weapons.
But gun-rights advocates say the new law effectively bans the sale of a popular type of pistol carried by many NYPD officers.
Second Amendment groups, including the National Rifle Association and Firearms Policy Coalition, have sued state officials over the law. The law, adopted in May, prohibits the sale of any semi-automatic pistol “that can be readily altered by hand or with common household tools so that it can be converted into a machine gun.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she intends to fight the suit.
Supporters say the new law is aimed at taking dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals. Pistols that are converted to fire like machine guns are incredibly dangerous — especially in the hands of criminals.
But critics charge that it’s unnecessary and unconstitutional.
“There's already laws on the books,” said state Sen. Mark Walczyk, a Watertown-area Republican. “This is specifically targeting certain makes, especially the Glock pistol, which is the most popular across the country and here in New York.”
The sale of automatic weapons — which fire continuously while the trigger is pulled — has been banned in New York for decades. Semiautomatic rifles and pistols, which fire one round per trigger pull, are common.
But the rise of 3D printing means that certain pistols, including Glock’s offerings, can be altered with a small switch, according to Sam Levy, director of policy for the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. He said the new law is necessary to prevent conversions.
“We want to make those switches obsolete,” he said. “Those switches only work on a very specific type of semiautomatic pistol that is uniquely vulnerable to this type of conversion, and we don't want to wait for the next five or ten or thousand people to get their hands on those switches.”
The legislation doesn’t specifically mention Glock, but its pistols are particularly susceptible because of a cross-shaped trigger bar that the company patented decades ago and uses in its various models, Levy said. This kind of trigger bar can be easily caught by a “switch” attached to the back of the gun, which prevents the trigger from re-engaging after a round is fired.
Glock didn’t respond to a message seeking comment. The company announced in 2025 that it is issuing new models of its handguns with internal updates.
The gun-rights groups say Glock pistols aren’t relevantly different from other semiautomatic pistols and that they are commonly used in New York and around the country.
“That is a handgun ban,” the groups said in papers filed in federal court in Buffalo. “The fact that the ban targets only one category of popular handguns does not make it constitutional.”
The Firearms Policy Coalition said in a statement that it has challenged similar laws in Maryland and California. Connecticut lawmakers also passed a ban on convertible pistols this year.
Hochul, a Democrat, said that she was proud to sign the measure into law because converted pistols can fire up to 20 rounds a second. She said conversion is a growing problem, and modified pistols have been recovered by police in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse.
“I strengthened our gun laws to protect New Yorkers from these deadly weapons,” Hochul said in a statement. “We’ll defend our right to keep New Yorkers safe — and we’ll win.”
The new law requires the State Police to determine what models of pistols are readily convertible. Those models would then be banned for sale by the state’s gun shops.
People who own pistols meeting the definition can keep them, but their resale would be restricted to other private parties or family members. Police departments would be able to buy Glock pistols, and officers would still be able to use them.
The lawsuit notes that the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has overturned a broad ban on the possession of pistols in Washington, D.C. as well as New York state’s restrictive pistol-permitting laws. In 2024, the Supreme Court struck down a federal rule banning “bump stocks,” which let people fire rifles almost as rapidly as if they were machine guns.
The Supreme Court ruled in those cases that the Second Amendment protects the possession of firearms “in common use.” Analysts say Glock controls around 65% of the U.S. market for handguns, the groups argue in court papers.
Walczyk said the new law amounts to an attack on the Second Amendment and an attempt by Hochul to put gun shops out of business. “They want to do everything they can to squeeze their business model to make practicing your Second Amendment,” he said.
Levy, the gun safety advocate, said he hopes the new laws in New York and other states will apply economic pressure to gun manufacturers.
“It is really designed to look forward, to look at the industry who has continued to prioritize its profits over public safety and refuse to update its designs in simple ways that would prevent this type of switch conversion,” he said.
