Key Takeaways
- The Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging a New York law banning the sale of Glock and Glock-style handguns.
- The law criminalizes the sale or transfer of pistols deemed ‘convertible’ into machineguns, carrying severe penalties.
- SAF argues this law targets lawful sellers rather than actual criminals and highlights issues with the definition of ‘convertible pistol.’
- The case gained support from the NRA and other firearms groups, addressing the cruciform trigger bar controversy.
- New York has not yet responded to the lawsuit, and updates will follow as the case progresses in court.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
BELLEVUE, WA — The Second Amendment Foundation announced on August 14, 2026, that it and its partners have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York challenging a New York law that bars the sale and transfer of Glock and Glock-style handguns.
The law at issue makes the transaction itself the crime. According to SAF’s announcement of the filing, the updated statute provides that “…any dealer in firearms or gunsmith who…sells, transfers, disposes of, or transports or ships as merchandise a convertible pistol shall be guilty of a class D felony.” SAF says the law also directs the Superintendent of the New York State Police to publish an annual list of machinegun convertible pistols, and that anyone who violates it on or after May 31, 2027, faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of $5,000 or more.
The mechanical question is where this gets interesting, and SAF says it is the heart of the case. Glock and Glock-style pistols are built with a cruciform trigger bar, a part that gun control advocates claim makes them easy to illegally convert into machineguns. SAF says Glock’s original 1982 patent covered that component, and that when the patent expired in 2020, many other manufacturers began producing pistols built the same way. Because a factory stock Glock or Glock-style pistol has a cruciform trigger bar, SAF says it meets New York’s new definition of a “convertible pistol” and will be illegal to sell or transfer once the law takes effect.
“Not to be outdone by their West Coast gun-grabbing counterparts in California, New York lawmakers made providing some of the most common handguns in America to law-abiding New Yorkers punishable by seven years in prison,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, who added that “it was also New York that was already smacked down by the Supreme Court for infringing on the right to carry in NYSRPA v. Bruen.”
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb tied the argument to who actually gets punished. “Making someone a criminal for selling or transferring a handgun merely because someone can illegally convert those firearms into something they are not is absurd,” Gottlieb said. “It’s already illegal to convert these pistols into machineguns and the conversion itself requires possession of other illegal items, but lawmakers persist in focusing on the handgun and not the criminals who will continue committing crimes with or without this new law in place.”
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SAF says the National Rifle Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, two private citizens and a licensed firearms dealer joined it in the case, and that the same cruciform trigger bar issue is being litigated elsewhere, including in SAF’s Renna case.
New York has not yet answered and no judge has ruled. I will continue tracking the case as it moves through the Western District of New York.
