New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport recently sent subpoenas to firearms dealers across the state demanding customer records for lawful Glock pistol sales to New Jersey residents over the past ten years. Gun rights groups are calling the move an unconstitutional attack on privacy that has nothing to do with the state’s legal theory and everything to do with exposing gun owners to public harassment.
The subpoenas appear to stem from the state Attorney General’s Office’s 2024 public nuisance lawsuit against Glock, Inc., but the demand for individual customer records goes well beyond what that lawsuit’s legal theory would seem to require. The state claims that Glock’s design, which has remained largely unchanged for over 40 years, is too easy to illegally convert into a machine gun using aftermarket switches. Other states have filed similar lawsuits, and some, like California, have now banned the sale of Glocks entirely.
The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action argues that the records are completely unconnected to the state’s case theory. The NRA-ILA points out that since New Jersey’s pistol permitting system already operates as a de facto handgun registry, the Attorney General can produce those records from the office’s own database without subpoenaing FFLs.
The critical distinction involves how subpoenaed records are treated under New Jersey law. Unlike registry records, which are exempt from public disclosure, subpoenaed documents become a matter of public record. The NRA-ILA argues this “is being done solely for the purpose of harassing and doxxing residents who purchased the most popular pistol in America.”
John Commerford, NRA-ILA Executive Director, did not mince words in a legislative alert. “Subpoenaing law-abiding firearm dealers to help build a state gun registry is unconstitutional and utterly outrageous,” Commerford said. “If New Jersey believes it can trample the Second Amendment and federal law with impunity, they are gravely mistaken. The NRA will not stand idly by while progressive politicians attempt to implement this dangerous, Orwellian scheme to dox, track, and harass honest, law-abiding Americans, and we are prepared to take any action necessary to protect the rights of New Jersey gun owners.”
The Second Amendment Foundation reached the same conclusion through a different analytical path. Kostas Moros, SAF Director of Legal Research and Education, suggested in a detailed thread on X that the only explanation for the subpoenas, given the state’s existing registry infrastructure, is that the AG’s office wants to make gun owner records publicly accessible.
“It is not immediately clear why New Jersey needs these records, given the state already maintains a de facto registry for handguns through its pistol permitting system,” Moros wrote. “It could be that the Attorney General wants to make these records public, as under New Jersey law and in a small nod towards respecting privacy, firearm registration records are exempt from public disclosure under the state’s laws.”
Moros argued that regardless of the AG’s actual motive, the subpoenas constitute an “unconstitutional attack” on gun owner privacy and one that runs counter to the historical tradition the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision requires gun regulations to fit within.
“For many people who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights, their status as a gun owner remains an intensely private matter,” Moros wrote. “Americans have a variety of reasons for wanting to keep their gun ownership to themselves… Whatever their reasons for secrecy, our historical tradition supports the idea that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their status as gun owners.”
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The New Jersey subpoenas fit into a broader pattern of state attorneys general in restrictive gun law states using litigation against firearm manufacturers as a vehicle to access information about individual gun owners. The mechanism varies from subpoenas to public nuisance suits to civil discovery, but the result tends to be the same. Lawful gun ownership becomes a matter of state interest beyond what existing registration regimes already capture.
This coordinated approach extends beyond litigation. Maryland recently passed SB 334, a bill banning the sale or transfer of “machine gun convertible pistols” that can be converted with illegal switches. Governor Wes Moore signed the legislation on May 26, 2026, with the Act taking effect October 1, 2026 and the ban on commercial activity beginning January 1, 2027. New York had already enacted a similar Glock ban through its 2026-27 state budget, and Connecticut enacted parallel legislation the same day as Maryland, with Governor Ned Lamont signing Substitute House Bill 5043 on May 26. The NRA, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Second Amendment Foundation have since filed a federal lawsuit challenging Maryland’s law, arguing it effectively bans nearly every Glock and Glock-style handgun on the market.
For New Jersey gun owners who purchased a Glock at any point in the last decade, the practical exposure is real. Records identifying individuals as Glock owners, made public under New Jersey’s open records law, would be searchable, indexable, and effectively permanent. Whether the AG’s office actually intends to make the records public or whether the subpoena is a procedural step that will not result in disclosure remains the central unanswered question.
However, after public pressure from gun-rights groups and media coverage, the Attorney General’s Office reportedly narrowed or clarified the demand, stating through counsel that it was not seeking customer-identifying information and would accept aggregate sales data.
The NRA-ILA, SAF, and other gun rights organizations are signaling they will challenge the subpoenas before any disclosure happens. Whether affected FFLs comply, resist, or seek protective orders will shape what comes next in what has become a multi-front battle over America’s most popular handgun.
About José Niño
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can contact him via Facebook and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
All the more reason to keep 80%ers and CNC machines or 3D printers including any files or supplies needed while stopping any and all laws prohibiting such.
Let’s face it, they have a registry and the only way to beat or break it is for us to roll our own and then trade and sell without FFL’s. Our own government is against the 2nd amendment.
Make OreGONEistan OreGUN again.