Are Forced Reset Triggers Legal in West Virginia?

West Virginia Code section 61-7-9 makes it unlawful to carry, transport, or possess any machine gun, submachine gun, or other fully automatic weapon unless the person has fully complied with applicable federal statutes and rules. The chapter does not create a separate forced-reset-trigger or generic rate-increasing-trigger category.

The threshold question is whether a mechanism produces fully automatic fire.

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 2026-10-20. 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.