Maryland has in effect banned the Glock handgun. Not by name, but by design: Senate Bill 334, signed by Governor Wesley Moore on May 26, 2026, outlaws the sale, purchase, and transfer of any semi-automatic handgun built with a cruciform trigger bar — a mechanism found in nearly every Glock and Glock-style pistol on the market today. A coalition of plaintiffs led by David J. Bathras Sr., joined by Atlantic Guns, the National Rifle Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation, has now filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in Bathras v. Moore in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. I think they win, and I think the reasoning here should not be close.
What Maryland Senate Bill 334 Actually Bans
The relevant Maryland law, SB 334, does not confiscate guns Marylanders already own. It cuts off the ability to acquire them. Effective January 1, 2027, no one may lawfully manufacture, sell, purchase, or transfer a “machine gun convertible pistol” — the state’s label for a handgun with a cruciform trigger bar. Since that design is standard across the Glock line and its many clones, the effect is to freeze the market on the most popular handgun platform in the country. The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and to bear arms, and both of those rights are hollow if the state can simply make arms unobtainable in the first place.
Maryland’s Theory Would Ban Shotguns Too
Maryland’s justification is that a Glock-style pistol can be illegally converted into a fully automatic weapon with a “Glock switch.” That conversion is already a federal and state crime, entirely apart from SB 334. But if the mere possibility of criminal conversion of a lawful firearm into an unlawful firearm were enough to ban a lawful arm, the same logic bans shotguns. A shotgun barrel can be cut down with a hacksaw in under a minute, turning a lawful firearm into an illegal short-barreled shotgun. No one seriously proposes banning shotgun sales on that basis, and Maryland’s rationale for banning Glocks fails for the same reasons.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), sets the actual constitutional test, and it turns on the word “is.” An arm may be banned only if it is dangerous and unusual — present tense, current condition, not what a criminal might later make of it. A Glock pistol in its factory configuration is not dangerous and unusual. It is, in Heller’s own words, among the most common self-defense weapons in America. What a criminal could theoretically do to it after an illegal modification says nothing about what the arm is now.
The 2A Rights Claimants’ Legal Brief Gets the Framework Right
The legal complaint applies the three-part plain-text test the Supreme Court set out in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), and reaffirmed in Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ___ (2026): the regulation must apply to “the people,” concern “arms,” and restrict the keeping or bearing of arms. As the brief puts it:
“The Second Amendment to the US Constitution protects law-abiding citizens’ right to possess and, necessarily, to acquire firearms that are in common use for lawful purposes. This includes handguns, which are ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon’ […] As handguns, these arms are clearly protected by the Second Amendment as articulated in Heller, and SB 334 is flatly unconstitutional under settled law.”
Every textual element of the Second Amendment is satisfied. The people affected are Maryland residents generally. The arms are handguns, the category Heller already placed at the core of the right. And the restriction on acquisition is a restriction on keeping and bearing, since neither right can be exercised without first acquiring the weapon.
Heller Already Did the Historical Spade Work
Once the plain text is triggered under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the burden shifts to Maryland to justify the ban with historical tradition. But as I argued in my Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy piece, “What Part of ‘In Common Use’ Don’t You Understand?: How Courts Have Defied Heller in Arms-Ban Cases — Again,” courts do not get to redo Heller’s historical analysis every time a state dislikes the answer. Heller already concluded that the only tradition supporting a categorical arms ban is if the banned arm is “dangerous and unusual,” and thus arms in common use for lawful purposes fail that test. This is the same reasoning the Fourth Circuit sidestepped in Bianchi v. Brown, 111 F.4th 438 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc), when it upheld Maryland’s rifle ban while conceding handguns remain protected — a concession that now cuts directly against the state in this case.
Maryland signed this law knowing the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Viramontes v. Cook County, with a decision on semi-automatic rifle bans expected by June 2027. SB 334 is swimming against that current, not with it. I think there is a good chance that the preliminary injunction will issue, and I expect this ban ultimately to join the growing list of post-Heller overreach that does not survive contact with the Constitution.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.