A bill making it a felony offense to own a device that turns legal firearms into machine guns passed a House committee vote Tuesday.
Republican Rep. Jason Nemes of Middletown sponsored House Bill 299, saying it gives local officers the ability to take these federally banned devices off the street.
“Good Second Amendment supporters like us always say, ‘We don't need new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we have.’ That's this bill,” Nemes said. “It makes it easier for our folks to endorse it, to enforce it, to keep our people and our law enforcement safe.”
The Republican sponsored bill that some lawmakers see as enhancing firearms restrictions is unconventional for Kentucky’s GOP-dominated General Assembly, which rarely passes legislation that would limit gun owners in any way.
Although most Republicans and all Democrats on the committee voted in favor, four Republicans either chose to pass or vote against the measure after Louisville’s police chief testified the devices have become a problem in the state’s biggest city.
While Republican opponents argued it infringes under Second Amendment gun rights, supporters of the legislation said in the Tuesday hearing that the bill would merely allow local law enforcement to enforce what is already federal law.
Fully automatic machine guns that fire multiple rounds with the single pull of a trigger are tightly regulated under federal law. However, conversion devices like Glock switches allow users to convert semi-automatics into illegal machine guns quickly, letting a shooter fire shots in rapid succession.
Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Paul Humphrey said the devices can convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon. The switches are already illegal federally, but Humphrey said his department is unable to enforce that. Anecdotally, Humphrey said two shootings in Louisville last week appeared to be committed with likely converted automatic weapons.
“We need to get that person off the street in order to save lives of community members or save their life,” Humphrey said. “We don't necessarily have the ability to do it without depending on the federal government [now].”
Nemes said the switches are also becoming an issue in other Kentucky cities — police chiefs from Hopkinsville and Elizabethtown joined Humphrey and Nemes in presenting the bill. It has the support of the Kentucky Sheriffs’ Association and the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police.
Rep. Bill Wesley, a Republican from Ravenna, said he could not vote in favor of the bill because he promised to protect gun rights.
“I always stand with the law enforcement, but I gave my people a word, and my word that I would always stand for our Second Amendment,” Wesley said. “My people back home [are] going to say that we don't have gangs. We don't deal with that back home.”
The National Rifle Association is neutral on the legislation, Nemes said.
GOP Rep. TJ Roberts from Burlington said he believes the bill might infringe on the Second Amendment as he voted no and questioned the efforts to try legislating specific devices. He pointed to forced reset triggers, that Roberts said criminals could switch to instead of Glock switches.
“It's always a moving target,” Roberts said. “The technology always seems to outpace the law, so I'm not sure if there would be any benefit to it.”
In 2019, Kentucky became a permitless carry state that does not require permits for concealed carry for those over 21. Another law passed in 2024 would block Kentucky state or local governments from keeping any list or registry of guns or gun owners. A bill that already passed the state House this year would allow 18-year-olds to carry concealed guns as well, via provisional licenses.
Nemes said the bill doesn’t make anything that’s legal now illegal. He also questioned the argument that banning the device would be ineffective due to the speed of technological advances.
“When people find new technologies, you go after those new technologies, it doesn't mean you don't go after the things that are already dangerous,” Nemes said.
The bill includes several exceptions, like police officers while carrying out their jobs or guns legally registered under the 1934 National Firearms Act. Possessing a machine gun conversion device would be a Class C felony under the bill, which carries between a five and 10 year prison sentence. Those prison terms generally cost the state between roughly $212,000 and $425,000 per conviction, according to a corrections impact statement.
The bill would not touch bump stocks, which harness a gun's recoil energy so that the trigger bumps against the shooter's stationary finger, allowing the gun to fire at a rate comparable to a traditional machine gun. After a gunman opened fire on a Las Vegas music festival, killing 60 people and wounding over 400 more in 2017, President Donald Trump banned bump stocks, the accessory that allowed him to fire more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition in 10 minutes and commit the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that ban in 2024, ruling the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority when it expanded the definition of “machine gun” to include bump stocks.
