A 22-year-old Mobile man is facing a felony charge under Alabama’s year-old Glock switch ban after police officers searching his car during a traffic stop found a handgun modified with a device that turns it into a fully automatic weapon.
According to the Mobile Police Department, officers stopped a vehicle driven by Joshua Coleman in the area of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Crawford Lane at about 10 a.m. on a Monday morning in early July. As officers approached the car, they smelled the odor of marijuana, which they cited as probable cause to search.
“The driver and passenger were removed from the vehicle, and upon a probable cause search of the vehicle, they located two firearms, one of which had a Glock switch attached,” the department said in a press release.
Coleman was arrested and booked into the Mobile County Metro Jail. According to jail logs, he was charged under the state’s Machine Gun Conversion Device Act — the formal name for the Glock switch ban the Legislature passed in 2025. Jail records showed no prior criminal history for Coleman in Mobile County, and he remained in custody awaiting a bond hearing as of the following morning.
What a Glock switch is, and why it is illegal
A Glock switch — sometimes called an auto sear or conversion device — is a small attachment that fits on the rear of a semi-automatic handgun and alters its trigger mechanism, allowing the pistol to fire one round for every pull of the trigger rather than repeatedly with a single pull. With a switch installed, a shooter can empty an entire magazine in seconds.
The devices have been federally restricted since the National Firearms Act of 1934, which treats any firearm that fires more than once per trigger pull as a machine gun. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives enforces that ban, and possession of an unregistered conversion device is a federal crime carrying up to 10 years in prison.
Alabama added its own prohibition in 2025, when Gov. Kay Ivey signed Senate Bill 116 into law, making Alabama the 25th state to ban conversion devices outright. Under the act, possession of a Glock switch is a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of as much as $15,000. The law includes narrow exceptions for law enforcement officers acting in their official capacity and for devices registered under the federal National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.
A device spreading fast in Alabama
State lawmakers who pushed the ban pointed to a steep rise in the devices turning up in evidence rooms. Data from the ATF showed the number of Glock switches recovered by law enforcement in Alabama had increased more than 1,200 percent year over year when the bill passed, according to the governor’s office.
The push gained urgency after mass shootings in which conversion devices were used, including the September 2024 mass shooting at a Birmingham lounge that left multiple people dead and a November 2024 shooting in Tuskegee. Switches have also been linked to shootings that killed and wounded police officers across the South. Law enforcement leaders told legislators that a state charge lets local prosecutors move quickly, without waiting for a federal case to be built.
Mobile has seen its own string of switch cases this year. In February, a man was arrested after allegedly being found with a modified firearm during an argument on Joe Cain Day, the Mardi Gras celebration that precedes Fat Tuesday. MPD spokesperson Blake Brown said officers had discovered other switches in the Mobile area this year as well, though the department did not have a cumulative count of the arrests connected to them.
The arrest of two Mobile men who were sent to federal prison for illegal Glock switches — a case announced by a federal judge’s office in late August — underscored the dual-track enforcement the state law was designed to complement: local police make the initial arrest, and federal prosecutors can pick up the most serious cases.
Coleman’s case will be handled in Mobile County District Court initially, with a bond hearing to determine whether he is released while awaiting trial. The charge carries a maximum of a decade behind bars if he is convicted.