New Jersey Uses Glock Lawsuit To Build The Gun Registry
New Jersey’s Attorney General is issuing subpoenas to Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) seeking records tied to Glock pistol sales to New Jersey residents, with the stated purpose of supporting a lawsuit against Glock. The subpoenas reportedly cover more than a decade of Glock sales (back to January 2016) and demand extensive data,including buyer names and addresses,dates of purchase,firearm details (make/model/serial number/caliber),and communications or marketing records related to Glock sales and “switches” (devices alleged to enable automatic fire). A Superior Court judge is allowing finding to move forward after refusing to dismiss the claims.
Supporters of gun ownership argue the process could create lists of gun owners that expose personally identifiable information and may function as a step toward broader tracking or future confiscation efforts-especially while background-check systems are described as producing high rates of mistaken denials.
The article also contrasts the positions of the parties in the Glock litigation: New Jersey alleges Glock designed and marketed pistols that criminals can convert into illegal fully automatic weapons despite knowing about the issue and receiving warnings from law enforcement. Glock disputes the claim, arguing its pistols are not uniquely easy to convert, that the semiautomatic design is broadly similar to other handguns, and that criminals are responsible for illegal modifications. It further argues that a Glock “switch” does not operate like a purpose-built fully automatic machine gun and instead disrupts the pistol’s trigger and cycling mechanics in a way that creates reliability and safety hazards (including potential out-of-battery discharges), raising risks not only to the shooter but also to bystanders due to loss of controllability.
the piece claims New Jersey’s approach extends beyond policing illegal modifications by seeking detailed records about lawful firearm purchasers while advancing disputed technical and legal theories about firearm conversion.
For those concerned that background checks will eventually be used to create gun registries that can later facilitate confiscation, they need only look at what is happening now in New Jersey. New Jersey’s Attorney General relies on questionable claims to justify targeting Glocks as firearms that can supposedly be easily converted into true, fully automatic machine guns.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport’s office is subpoenaing Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) across the state for records involving Glock pistol sales to New Jersey residents. The subpoenas, reportedly dated around May 11, 2026, began reaching dealers on May 14 and impose a response deadline of June 15, 2026. A Superior Court judge hearing the case has refused to dismiss the lawsuit and is allowing discovery to go forward.
The subpoenas demand records covering every lawful sale or transfer of Glock handguns dating back to January 2016 — roughly the past decade. They reportedly target all New Jersey FFLs and require dealers to turn over extensive customer and sales information.
The demands include buyer names and addresses, dates of sale, firearm details such as make, model, serial number, and caliber, and whether the firearms were sold to civilians or law enforcement. The subpoenas also seek information on how dealers obtained Glock inventory, contracts or agreements with Glock, communications with Glock concerning sales, marketing, “switches,” or automatic-fire capability, and records related to advertising and marketing directed at New Jersey customers.
Those who support gun ownership are concerned that compiling these buyer lists in litigation could expose personally identifiable information and serve as a step toward broader tracking or future confiscation efforts.
“What’s funny is these folks want all the gun records, but they don’t want to give the federal government voting records,” said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, noting the irony.
Democrats are now using a background-check system that wrongly denies more than 99 percent of blocked gun purchases to help build a gun registry to facilitate confiscation. Those errors overwhelmingly burden law-abiding black and Hispanic men, who are disproportionately caught in mistaken denials despite having committed no disqualifying offense. The claim that gun registration is a useful tool for solving crimes is also false.
New Jersey argues that Glock knowingly designed and marketed pistols that criminals can convert into illegal machine guns with so-called “Glock switches” or auto sears. According to the state, Glock has known about this problem for years, received repeated warnings from law enforcement, and still refused to redesign its pistols to make those conversions more difficult.
Glock rejects the claim that its pistols are uniquely or unusually easy to convert. Glock’s semiautomatic operating system is not fundamentally different from many other modern semiautomatic pistols. Glock pistols use a fairly conventional short-recoil, locked-breech design that is common across much of the handgun industry. In addition, the company argues that criminals—not Glock—bear responsibility for illegally modifying firearms with already-prohibited conversion devices.
Moreover, the mechanism created by a Glock switch differs fundamentally from the way a true fully automatic machine gun operates. A military-style machine gun uses an integrated fire-control system specifically engineered for automatic fire. By contrast, a Glock switch interferes with the pistol’s existing trigger-bar and reset mechanism. The device wedges the trigger bar out of engagement and forces the pistol’s short-recoil action to continue cycling uncontrollably as long as the trigger remains depressed.
That crude method creates serious reliability and safety problems. Because the switch bypasses normal timing and reset functions, the pistol can fire before the slide and chamber are fully closed and locked. That creates a real risk of catastrophic malfunction, including damage to the firearm and potentially serious injury to the shooter.
Common damage includes a destroyed or blown-open magazine, cracked or split receiver or upper, damaged or missing bolt, firing pin, extractor, ejector, operating springs, and stock.
Flying brass shards or case fragments can slice skin (hands, arms, face, cheek) or embed in tissue. Real incidents include a shooter’s thumb being sliced open “like a box cutter” with powder burns, or brass embedding in a shoulder causing bleeding. Fragments can strike the face or eyes.
But others besides the shooter can also be harmed. “The problem about that is when you pull the trigger you can’t stop it, the gun, the bullets are going to go and what we’re seeing is young people and adults can’t control their gun. … ” warned Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff Leon Lott. “You may hit a lot of innocent people you may even hit people that’s on your team because you can’t control that gun.”
New Jersey’s lawsuit against Glock goes far beyond targeting criminals who illegally modify firearms. By demanding detailed records on lawful gun buyers while advancing questionable claims about how these conversions actually work, the state is moving toward the type of firearm registry that gun owners have long feared.
John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He served as the senior advisor for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice during 2020-21.
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