The federal government struck a deal Thursday, agreeing not to return trigger switches, which can make semiautomatic firearms mimic machine guns, to people in Democrat-led states where the devices are banned by law.
The states covered are California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington. The District of Columbia is also covered by the agreement.
The deal ends a long-running saga that saw the devices, officially known as forced-reset triggers, banned and seized by the feds. A federal judge intervened to nullify that, and the government then moved to return devices. The Democrat-led states moved to block that, saying the devices were still illegal under their own laws.
Under Thursday’s agreement, people who live in the covered states and the District, and who had FRTs taken away, either must abandon their claims or else agree to have the devices sent to a state where they are still legal.
Anyone who then took them from legal states to illegal states could face prosecution, the deal said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, celebrated the deal.
“We are glad this legal action worked to stop these dangerous devices from entering our state,” he said.
FRTs are particularly common for Glock pistols, to the point that they are often simply called “Glock switches.”
Automatic weapons are heavily regulated at the federal level and, for an average citizen, generally require the purchase of a weapon manufactured before 1986. That makes them prohibitively expensive.
Glock switches can be made with a 3D printer.
Guns outfitted with switches have been implicated in some high-profile shootings in recent years, including one in Sacramento, California, in 2022 that saw a fight escalate into a gun battle, with six people slain.
