Connecticut Glock Ban Blocked by Federal Judge

Last updated October 2026 · By Nick Hall, tracks state handgun bans and Second Amendment injunction fights for USA Gun Shop readers

Quick take: A federal judge blocked Connecticut’s ban on new “convertible pistols” on September 30, 2026, the day before it was due to take effect. It’s a preliminary injunction, not a final ruling, and the judge said the outcome could change once the state builds a fuller record.

• Ruling: Judge Kari A. Dooley granted the preliminary injunction motions in Glock, Inc. v. Griffin (3:26-cv-01525) and National Shooting Sports Foundation v. Griffin (3:26-cv-01528) on September 30, 2026.
• Court: The US District Court for the District of Connecticut, which heard both cases together on September 29 and signed the order at Bridgeport.
• Why it matters: The court found the plaintiffs likely to win their Second Amendment challenge to Public Act 26-41, which makes it a class D felony to import or sell a covered pistol built on or after October 1, 2026.
• What’s next: The cases continue, the judge did not decide whether Glock’s SlimLine or “Series VI” pistols fall outside the law, and no notice of appeal was on either docket as of September 30.

The state asked for until October 19 to respond. Judge Dooley denied that on September 28, heard both cases together the next day in an hour and six minutes, and granted the injunctions the day after. I read all 12 pages of the order so you don’t have to. Here’s what it blocks, and the three things it doesn’t decide.

Table of Contents

What Judge Dooley Actually Ordered

When Glock sued Connecticut on September 21, 2026, the law had ten days left before it went live. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, Shadow Systems and Blue Trail Range, a trade association, a gun maker and a retailer, filed their own case the same day.

On September 30, Judge Kari A. Dooley granted both motions in a single 12-page order filed in both cases. It is signed at Bridgeport, and it ends with a line every dealer in the state should notice: “A separate Order shall enter.”

That separate document is the injunction itself, entered the same day as ECF 32 in the Glock case and ECF 45 in the NSSF case. The 12-page order explains why. The injunction sets the terms, and if you hold an FFL in Connecticut, that is the one to read before you place an order with a distributor.

Glock asked the court to bar the defendants from “implementing and enforcing the ban” on convertible pistols. Those defendants are Chief State’s Attorney Patrick J. Griffin, 13 State’s Attorneys and, in Glock’s case only, Commissioner Ronnell A. Higgins of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

A preliminary injunction. Not a verdict. The judge called the relief “prohibitory,” meaning it serves to “maintain the status quo until such time as the issues may be fully developed and adjudicated.”

Why the Proving Laws Could Not Save the Connecticut Glock Ban

The fight ran on the Supreme Court’s Bruen test. Step one asks whether a law clashes with the plain text of the Second Amendment. For this motion only, the state accepted that it does, which made the law “presumptively unconstitutional” and put the burden on Connecticut to show it fits the country’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.

Connecticut offered two traditions. The first was founding-era proving laws from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which required firearms to be inspected before they could be sold. The second was the history of restricting machine guns. Combined, the state argued, they make the ban consistent with that tradition.

Judge Dooley gave the argument more respect than a headline suggests. “Defendants’ argument is not without some force,” she wrote. Her problem was the fit: proving laws checked that a gun was safe before it was sold. “They were not designed to, and indeed could not, forestall future misuse of the firearm (even if predictable) after it enters the stream of commerce.”

Nobody claims a factory Glock is unsafe at the counter. The order says there is no dispute that handguns with a cruciform trigger bar, unconverted, are “not only safe, but extremely popular for purposes of self-defense.”

The plaintiffs’ counter was the sawed-off shotgun. When that became a problem, the response was to ban the modified shotgun, not shotguns altogether. Machine gun conversion devices are already illegal, they argued, and so is a pistol that has been converted with one.

Then came the line I expect to see quoted in every brief from here on: the state, she wrote, offered “no adequate explanation as to how the sale of a firearm manufactured on September 30, 2026 needs no safety regulation but the same firearm manufactured 24 hours later is sufficiently dangerous so as to be properly restricted and regulated by the state.”

The $25,000 Gun Case at Blue Trail Range

The state’s best practical argument was that the plaintiffs hadn’t been hurt yet. The ban only reaches pistols made on or after October 1, 2026, so dealers could keep selling what they already had. The judge agreed with the premise: “That is true, and not in dispute.”

But stock runs out. Blue Trail Range told the court it had about $25,000 worth of cruciform-trigger handguns on hand, expected that inventory to be gone by the end of October 2026, and had already stopped placing orders for new ones because of the law.

The plaintiffs also pointed to lost sales to law enforcement, who by their account are “not exempted under the statute,” along with lost goodwill, disrupted contracts and the impracticality of carving Connecticut out of their advertising.

The state said motions filed this late can’t be that urgent. Judge Dooley split the blame in a footnote. The Attorney General “was clearly on notice that this challenge would be filed,” she wrote, and the plaintiffs “could have filed this action sooner.” She assigned blame to no party and drew no inference against the plaintiffs.

Three Things the Order Does Not Decide

First, this isn’t a ruling that the law is unconstitutional. It is a finding that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed, made nine days after the suits were filed, and the judge said so plainly. The result may derive from “the condensed time frame,” and “upon further development of the record, the outcome may well be different.”

Second, it reaches only the Second Amendment claim. Glock also argued the ban is void for vagueness and violates the right to freedom of speech. A footnote says the court “discusses only the challenge premised on the Second Amendment.”

Third, and this is the one Glock buyers care about, the court didn’t decide whether Glock’s current pistols are covered in the first place. Glock’s complaint asked for a declaration that its Slimline, V Series and Gen6 pistols are not convertible pistols. The order’s answer: “The Court does not, because it need not, take up the question of whether the Glock SlimLine or Series VI firearms fall outside the scope of the statute.”

There is a hint of movement. The state’s lawyers told the court that assessment “is underway,” and the judge wrote that she is “optimistic” a decision “will be forthcoming.” For anyone eyeing a Glock 43X or another Slimline, the state’s answer matters as much as the injunction does.

What Connecticut Buyers and Dealers Can Do Now

Start with what never changed. Section 3 of Public Act 26-41 targets importing, advertising and selling, not owning, and only a pistol “manufactured on or after October 1, 2026.” A Glock built before that date was never covered.

For pistols built on or after October 1, the court has granted the motions to stop the defendants enforcing the sales ban while the cases run. That protection lasts exactly as long as the injunction does.

Everything else in Connecticut’s gun laws still applies. Nothing in the order makes a conversion device legal, and the plaintiffs themselves told the court those are already illegal. The act’s other subjects, unfinished frames and lower receivers among them, aren’t discussed in the order.

If the injunction holds, the October 1 manufacturing cutoff stays unenforced while the case runs. If it is stayed or reversed, the cutoff comes back, and the supply of new Glocks in Connecticut becomes whatever was built before the first of the month.

What Happens Next in Glock v. Griffin

As of the Glock docket on September 30, the injunction was the newest entry and no notice of appeal had been filed in either case.

Attorney General William Tong, whose staff is defending the law, said when Glock filed that he would “aggressively defend Connecticut against efforts to erode those commonsense laws.” His statement is dated September 21.

An appeal would go to the Second Circuit. That is the court that in 2025 affirmed the denial of an injunction against Connecticut’s ban on certain assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines, in a decision this order cites more than once. In the passage Judge Dooley quotes, that court noted Connecticut residents remain able to “own and possess popular semiautomatic handguns like the Glock 17.”

Connecticut wrote a felony around a date of manufacture. The judge asked what changes in 24 hours. So far, no good answer.

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