Are Forced Reset Triggers Legal in South Carolina?

South Carolina defines a machine gun as a weapon that shoots, is designed to shoot, or can readily be restored to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. A one-shot-per-trigger-function FRT does not meet that definition.

The state's possession, sale, and transport offenses in Article 3 of Chapter 23, Title 16 apply to weapons satisfying that machine-gun definition. The article does not separately identify forced reset triggers, trigger activators, or rate-increasing trigger devices.

Under the 2025 DOJ settlement with Rare Breed Triggers, an FRT fires one round per trigger function and is not an NFA machine gun federally. The settlement covers rifles and grip-forward pistols; it does not extend to grip-fed handguns (Glock, S&W M&P, Canik), whose federal FRT status remains less settled. State bans operate independently of federal law through broader state machine-gun, trigger-activator, or rate-of-fire definitions.

Federal baseline verified 2026-07-28. Scope: Forced reset triggers (Rare Breed FRT-15, Dairyland Defender, and similar) and forced-reset selectors (AR Super Safety, ARC-Fire). One round per trigger function. Binary triggers are a separate class.