HARTFORD, CT - The party of “No Kings” strikes again. The Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), a pro-Second Amendment gun rights group in Connecticut, reports that HB5043, which would outlaw the sale of so-called “convertible pistols,” has passed the Connecticut House and is headed to the state Senate.
On Wednesday, the bill passed by a vote of 86-64, with 15 Democrats joining Republicans in opposition, a rarity in the hyper-partisan, Democrat-dominated Connecticut legislature. The bill would outlaw legal firearms that can be illegally altered to fire automatically, the CT Mirror reported.
The bill began as a proposal from gun-grabbing Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and would ban the sale of pistols that can be readily converted by hand or with a common household tool into a machine gun solely by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter, commonly known as a “switch” or a “cruciform trigger bar.” The bill would primarily affect Glocks, one of the most common handguns in the country.
Some of the more ignorant among Connecticut Democrats claim the devices allow up to “1,000 rounds per minute” to be fired from a common handgun. One can imagine the size of the magazine that is able to hold 1,000 rounds, but facts do not concern anti-gun liberal Democrats.
According to Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat who represents crime-ridden Bridgeport, the bill is supposed to “place pressure” on Glock to redesign the guns to make it more difficult to convert them into automatic weapons. He says Glock currently sells such a model in Germany.
“Machine guns are illegal in Connecticut, and they’re illegal in every other state in the country. But they are still showing up on our streets,” Stafstrom said.
Stafstrom claims that the Hartford Police Department has confiscated 51 such firearms converted into automatic weapons in 2023 and 2024. He claimed in one case that a modified Glock pistol had killed a 20-year-old woman and her four-year-old son. The Glock killed them, not the criminal thug who actually fired the weapon, according to Stafstrom.
As currently written, the bill would not ban anyone who already owns a Glock from keeping it or selling it to friends or family members. However, as we’ve seen time and time again, once a liberal Democrat gets a foot in the door, it’s a short ride to making owning or possessing such a weapon illegal, then leading to confiscation. But No Kings, right?
Despite promises that current owners would be grandfathered, a public hearing on the bill held in March drew a large number of people opposed to it.
Mega-liberal states California and Maryland have already passed laws banning “convertible pistols,” and New York is considering similar legislation.
During the floor debate last week, Reps. Greg Howard and Craig Fishbein, both Republicans, registered strong objections to the bill, saying the legislature shouldn’t be in the business of banning things simply because they could be used in a way that’s illegal or deadly. We’ve seen knives, automobiles, pressure cookers, machetes, and all manner of items used to kill people over the past several decades. The fact is, if someone wants to inflict harm, many common items can be used.
“I am opposed to a public policy that says that we are going to make it illegal for a law-abiding citizen to possess an otherwise legal piece of equipment because they ‘might be able’ to take that series of moving parts and turn it into something else,” Howard said.
Fishbein mentioned other legally available items, like pool chemicals, can be deadly if used improperly.
“Year after year, we see the legislature attacking guns and not attacking criminals,” he said.
Indeed, Connecticut worked in the aftermath of the George Floyd overdose death to completely tie the hands of police officers, making many fearful of getting fired at best, and arrested at worst, for merely doing their jobs. Connecticut recently passed legislation attempting to restrict ICE agents from doing their jobs, again taking the side of criminals over law enforcement.
Howard also noted that even if the state ends up passing HB5043, people can find ways to modify other guns, mentioning that when Glock introduced its “V-series” models late last year, despite them having a different type of trigger mechanism that it addresses, people found a way to convert them to an automatic weapon.
“For as long as human ingenuity is going to exist, and as long as 3-D printers exist, and as long as physics exists, somebody, somewhere is going to find a way to manufacture [and] design something that can overcome the reset cycle of a pistol and make it fully automatic,” Howard said.
Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Doug Dubitsky, questioned the constitutionality of such a ban on handguns with “cruciform trigger bars,” and whether the state Supreme Court would uphold such a law. He addressed the elephant in the room–if every handgun could be illegally converted, the state could then ban all handguns.
Democrat Rep. Bob Godfrey said Connecticut’s high court had previously ruled on a ban on “military-style assault weapons” (black, scary-looking rifles) and said the legislature has the right to define which firearms are considered “defensive weapons” under the 2nd Amendment. We searched the 2nd Amendment for where “defensive weapons” are mentioned, and lo and behold–it’s not in there. Something about, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Under the bill, unfinished frames and receivers would now be defined as firearms, ostensibly to prevent the construction of so-called “ghost guns.” For the unfamiliar, a ghost gun is when people purchase firearm parts separately and then manufacture a gun themselves, which avoids background checks or the need to put a serial number on the finished firearm.
Republicans said Connecticut would be better served if Democrats would focus more on preventing gun violence, such as gun violence prevention programs.
“We should be focusing on gun violence and not guns, because it’s like trying to pin down Jell-O,” House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, a Republican, told news outlets Wednesday. “They could pass every law in the books to regulate guns and restrict guns and prohibit the purchase of guns–it doesn’t actually accomplish, I think, what we want to see, and that is a reduction of gun violence, especially in our cities.”
The bill goes to the Democrat-heavy state Senate, where it will likely pass, and then be signed into law by anti-gun zealot Gov. Ned Lamont. It is likely gun rights groups will take legal action to get the law overturned as unconstitutional.
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