HARTFORD, Conn. — A federal court has temporarily blocked enforcement of a new state law that would ban the sale of legal handguns that can be converted, by the attachment of illegal devices, to fully automatic weapons.

U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley’s hurried ruling grants an emergency order sought by Austrian gun maker Glock and three trade groups to prohibit the state from enforcing a law that was to become effective on Thursday. Dooley issued the decision Wednesday after a hearing in court a day earlier.

“The statute is presumptively unconstitutional, and defendants have not met their burden of demonstrating that the statute is consistent with our nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Dooley wrote.

Dooley said the law falls outside traditional firearm safety regulation by prohibiting sales of a legal weapon used widely by law enforcement based on fear that some owners may later choose to illegally convert them to weapons capable to automatic fire with the installation of what are known as “machinegun conversion devices.”

Dooley emphasized the preliminary nature of the ruling and the hurried nature of the litigation preceding it in a short, 12-page decision.

The state’s “argument is not without some force,” the judge wrote. “But the Court concludes that reliance on the proving laws, even when viewed through the lens of a legitimate regulation of machine guns, at this juncture, does not adequately rebut the presumption that the statute is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”

“The Court agrees that this outcome may derive from the condensed time frame within which these issues have been presented and upon further development of the record, the outcome may well be different,” Dooley wrote.

The legislature enacted the gun control law at issue by a partisan vote on May 26 and the Dooley’s decision drew predictable political reaction.

“I’m disappointed by this ruling,” Gov. Ned Lamont a Democrat said. “We passed a commonsense law: you should not be able to turn a handgun into a machine gun with a simple piece of plastic. Closing this loophole in our gun regulations is not only widely supported, but also desperately wanted by Connecticut residents.”

The Democratic leaders of the state Senate said, “A Trump-appointed judge’s tortured interpretation of the Second Amendment won’t deter us from our sworn constitutional responsibility to protect our citizens.”

Republican state Sen. Rob Sampson, of Wolcott, said, “The law was poorly conceived, difficult to apply fairly, and targeted lawful firearms based on what a criminal might illegally do with them. I am tired of seeing responsible gun owners treated as the problem.

“It’s raining constitution in Connecticut.,” said state Rep. Craig Fishbein, a Wallingford Republican.

Dooley wrote that she based her ruling on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that, in order to ban the sale of a gun, the state must “affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that (establishes) the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”

The state, in its defense of the law, said it is consistent with both the history of regulations assuring firearm safety prior to sale and the “historic tradition of banning machine guns.”

Glock and the trade groups opposing the law said banning the sale of guns because they can later be illegally converted by criminals is inconsistent with traditional firearm regulation, which has been to outlaw illegal modifications.

Among other things, the trade groups argued that governments have not banned ownership of sawed off shotguns by banning all shotgun sales.

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