Alabama’s governor signed into law on Wednesday a ban on the conversion of pistols into fully automatic weapons, a move that follows a year of widespread gun violence in the state.
The devices, some of which are known as Glock switches, are already banned under federal law. But local law enforcement officials have said that not having a state law made it hard to charge and prosecute people who used them, fueling an epidemic of shootings in cities like Birmingham.
Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, who had previously pushed for the bipartisan bill, said in a statement that “while there is a federal ban on these gun conversion devices, we needed a way to empower our own law enforcement here in Alabama to get these illegal and extremely dangerous Glock switches off our streets.”
The devices are able to inflict indiscriminate carnage in seconds by transforming semiautomatic handguns into makeshift machine guns that fire dozens of bullets with one tug. For years, they have played a role in scores of gun deaths in the state.
Other deeply red states have also recently passed bans on the devices, including Mississippi and South Carolina. Tennessee lawmakers are weighing a similar ban. In all, more than 20 states have banned the devices, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group.
In recent years, those bans in the conservative South — where gun-related measures are usually met with skepticism — have been possible because of support from local law enforcement officers, who have argued that such laws make their jobs and communities safer.
Alabama’s new law comes in the wake of record-breaking violence in Birmingham, which had 151 homicides last year, including four deaths after a shooting outside a nightclub. Randall Woodfin, the city’s Democratic mayor, had been asking state lawmakers to help stem the violence by passing a ban on the devices.
In a video posted on his social media accounts, Mr. Woodfin said that the ban would allow the authorities to go after people who possess, sell and manufacture the conversion devices. The law, however, does not apply to law enforcement personnel or people who have registered their firearms in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, which is operated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Alabama has long had some of the highest rates of gun violence in the country, and it still has permissive gun laws, which some Democrats say is the reason the state has struggled to stem its violence. In 2022, the state passed a law that allows individuals to carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,278 gun-related deaths in Alabama in 2022 — the last year for which data is available — which was the fourth-highest rate in the country that year. Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico had higher rates.
Alabama State Representative Phillip Ensler, a Democrat, had been pushing to get the measure passed in Alabama for three years. This year, he said, he enlisted sheriffs and police chiefs to call their state representatives and senators and explain why such a ban would be helpful.
“The initial reaction from Republicans might have been, ‘Whoa, we don’t want to do anything that’s any sort of gun-related legislation,’” Mr. Ensler said.
But law enforcement officials, he added, laid out why they should: These devices are not used for hunting, they told legislators, and one cannot truly use it for self-defense because bullets end up being sprayed in an uncontrolled manner.
Legislators were also taken to shooting ranges, where officers showed how Glock switches work and the risks they pose. State Senator Will Barfoot, a Republican, was shown a video that demonstrated the use of a Glock switch device.
He ended up sponsoring the bill, which makes possessing or selling the devices a felony punishable by up to a decade in prison.
“When you work across the aisle, when you educate people, there is hope,” Mr. Ensler said. “There is an opportunity to try to do something meaningful.”