Alabama Senate Unanimously Approves Ban on Machine Gun Conversion Devices

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called for the legislature to prohibit machine gun conversion devices in her State of the State address earlier this year, and the state Senate has heeded her demand. On Tuesday the legislature’s upper chamber gave its unanimous approval to SB 116, authored by Republican Sen. Will Barfoot of Montgomery. 

While the bill aligns the state with the federal prohibition on machine gun conversion devices, the unanimous vote was also a reminder that 2A activists have a long way to go in terms of changing public attitudes towards full-auto firearms. 

SB116 was amended to enforce penalties for the possession of a machine gun conversion device even if it cannot be proven that someone was “knowingly” in possession.

Despite arguments from Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, and Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, that the state’s new permitless carry policy could be to blame for climbing gun violence, Barfoot has said that “guns and conversion devices are not the real problem.”

“The real problem are the people who use those,” he said previously.

And he reasserted his belief in the 2nd Amendment to the Senate on Tuesday. 

“As a supporter of 2nd Amendment rights and the owner of multiple firearms, there’s a balancing act there,” he said.

Now,”shall not be infringed” is pretty simple, and from a purist perspective the Second Amendment doesn’t place any limitations on what arms we the people can keep and bear. But machine guns remain the third rail of 2A politics, and given the unanimous approval of Barfoot’s bill in the Senate, it’s pretty clear that even the most staunch conservative lawmakers aren’t really afraid of any pushback from their constituents about banning conversion devices. In fact, I doubt that any of the senators who backed the ban would even describe it as a gun control bill. 

The same attitude prevails on Capitol Hill as well. A group of Republican senators including Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski have called on the ATF to swiftly undo the Biden-era rules targeting unfinished frames and receivers, pistol stabilizing braces, private gun sellers, and FFLs, and we’ve seen a push in both the House and Senate to remove suppressors from the National Firearms Act, but there’s been no corresponding effort to take full-autos off the NFA or to repeal the Hughes Amendment that prohibits the purchase of machine guns manufactured after 1986. 

The federal court system is unlikely to offer any relief to those who want to see the federal restrictions undone either. The Supreme Court’s decision in Heller noted that “weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like” may be banned; a line that multiple courts around the country have cited in support of bans on semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols under the theory that AR-15s and other semi-automatic  firearms are “like” machine guns. Justice Clarence Thomas has pointed out that SCOTUS has yet to flesh out which arms are covered by the Second Amendment’s protections, but given the reluctance by the High Court to take up a semi-auto ban it’s inconceivable that the current makeup of the Court would conclude that we the people have the right to keep and bear fully automatic firearms. 

If nothing else, this week’s vote in the Alabama Senate is a reminder that Second Amendment advocates have to deal with both courts of law and the court of public opinion, and we can’t neglect either one.