WASHINGTON — A tiny gun part, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, is capable of dramatically increasing how fast a gun can fire.
For years, federal agents seized these devices as a threat to public safety. Now, after a surprise legal settlement, they’re going back into circulation and showing up on new types of guns. That’s raising fresh concerns about what that could mean for communities nationwide.
Rapid fire from devices called forced reset triggers, or FRTs, can make semi-automatic rifles fire hundreds of rounds a minute.
Former ATF Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks has fired one, describing it as “scary.”
“I could not get it to fire a single round,” Hicks recalled. “The rounds go off so fast that there’s no real way to interrupt.”
Hicks told us that the proliferation of FRTs to new types of weapons poses a public safety threat (Photo: SBG)
It sounds like the description of a machine gun.
An FRT is a replacement trigger that uses a gun’s own cycling action to force the trigger forward after each shot, allowing rapid fire as long as pressure is maintained.
After a surprising move by the Department of Justice that declined to enforce the ATF’s classification of FRTs as machine guns, the market for them is expanding.
“Any time that proliferates, I think it’s a big security concern and personal safety concern,” Hicks told Spotlight on America.
In that 2025 settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed not to enforce a ban on FRTs made by one company, even returning 12,000 of them to their owners last year. But it contained a key provision: an agreement that the company would not “market, advertise or encourage … FRT triggers on any handgun.”
As part of its settlement, one FRT company agreed not to produce the device for handguns (Photo: SBG)
Less than a year later, at least two different companies are currently selling FRTs for handguns.
Hicks said those manufacturers may have been emboldened by the settlement.
“I think you’d have to be pretty naive to think that you could bless a type of these and not think other people who also would like to make money selling these things wouldn’t try to take advantage of the agreement,” she said.
We wanted to know why the DOJ would allow an FRT for one company, but not for others.
We posed that question to the department, along with asking whether it plans to take legal action against companies now selling FRTs for handguns. The DOJ never clearly stated whether the devices are illegal machine guns, which has left enforcement in limbo.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
The Department of Justice declined to answer our{ } questions (Photo: SBG)
We posed several questions about enforcement to the ATF as well. They did not respond.
Handguns are the most widely used guns in crimes in America, and are well known for being concealable. Hicks said FRTs are another way of converting handguns into full auto, essentially outgunning law enforcement and posing a threat to communities.
Today, more than two dozen states have banned machine-gun conversion devices, including FRTs, but most Americans still don’t know what they are.
An FRT allows for more rapid fire by using a gun’s own cycling action to reset the trigger (Photo: SBG)
These devices were already controversial, but now they’re being made for handguns, which means more of them can move into circulation quietly. And because they’re hard to track, the risk often doesn’t show up until after a shooting happens.
We asked Hicks what it will take for people to have an understanding of the devices.
“Well, what it always takes in this area is a tragedy,” she warned. “That’s what it always takes, and that is a real shame.”
