So, the Maryland “Glock ban” legislation’s (SB 334) synopsis says: “Prohibiting, on or after January 1, 2027, a person from manufacturing, selling, offering for sale, purchasing, receiving, or transferring a certain machine gun convertible pistol, subject to certain exceptions; requiring the Department of State Police to adopt regulations to implement the requirements of the Act, including publishing a list of prohibited machine gun convertible pistols; etc.”
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed the legislation into law.
The “certain machine gun convertible pistol(s)” they are referring to are, essentially, Glocks; specifically, however, the Maryland statute excludes hammer-fired semiautomatic pistols and striker-fired semiautomatic pistols lacking a cruciform trigger bar. So, in effect, the law bans nearly every Glock and Glock-style pistol on the market.
In response to this ban of very popular pistols, the National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation immediately filed a lawsuit challenging it as unconstitutional.
Essentially, some criminals figured out how to make “Glock switches,” which are illegal, homemade devices that theoretically can convert a Glock pistol into an illegal machine gun.
Anti-gun legislators then began to use this criminal behavior as an excuse to ban law-abiding citizens from owning Glocks—a gun anti-gun activists once wrongly labelled as a “plastic gun” and tried to ban it on the false grounds that it could slip through metal detectors.
Multiple states have now considered legislation to ban these very commonly owned firearms—meaning, these firearms are obviously constitutionally protected—and, as this was being written, three have put some type of ban into the law.
California was the first and most prominent. California passed a law (AB 1127) banning the sale of semi-automatic handguns that can be converted to full-auto with so-called “Glock switches.”
In New York, a “Glock ban” on the sale of so-called convertible pistols was included in the 2026-27 state budget and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
Now Maryland has followed those other anti-Second Amendment-majority legislatures and governors.
An analysis of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) import and domestic manufacturing data indicates that Americans own more than 10 million Glocks; some estimate the number to be much higher. Glocks are also still among the most-popular firearms for law enforcement. These pistols are clearly commonly owned.
Banning these popular semi-automatic pistols because some criminal element has devised a way to turn them into illegal firearms is like banning the passenger cars or trucks that someone has figured out how to remove “CAFE controls” (fuel-efficiency features driven by Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards) from to make them go faster.
Only it is worse in this case, as it is an unconstitutional infringement on a fundamental right.
This is why the lawsuit the NRA is a part of that is challenging this Maryland ban says, “The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects law-abiding citizens’ right to possess—and, as a necessary incident to that right, to acquire—firearms that are in common use for lawful purposes. This includes handguns, which are ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon’ and ‘the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home.’”
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