Massachusetts lawmakers have a profound tendency to favor gun control and they have for decades. I’m always struck by the irony of how our nation’s war to establish its independence started there and because the British showed up to take people’s guns, and yet here we are.
Legislators haven’t valued the right to keep and bear arms in the state for quite some time.
Their latest rules keep up this sad tradition.
However, if lawmakers thought gun owners in the state were going to take the new rules lying down, they were very, very wrong.
Massachusetts gun owners pressed residents to join a campaign to repeal a gun law passed earlier this summer that critics argue infringes upon Second Amendment rights.
A group of gun rights activists, local Republicans, and candidates for elected office gathered on Boston Common Saturday to rail against the new statute. It’s part of the early stages of an effort to push a referendum on the measure for the 2026 election.
Cape Gun Works Co-Founder Toby Leary said the entire 116-page bill that Gov. Maura Healey signed into law in July is “unconstitutional” and does not meet the so-called “bright-line” test, or the idea that people need to clearly understand laws to follow them.
“This law is so muddy, so murky, it’s buried 20 feet underground. We’ve already been going through a checkerboard of capricious and arbitrary laws regarding the Second Amendment that everyone’s worried about running afoul of … because they don’t want to lose their right to keep and bear arms,” he told the Herald.
Beacon Hill Democrats earlier this year ushered through a measure that bars residents under 21 from owning semiautomatic rifles or shotguns, though people between the ages of 18 and 21 could still own and possess firearms with an identification card.
The law allows those under 18 to use firearms under the direct supervision of a licensed adult for hunting, instruction, recreation, and participation in shooting sports.
The statute also requires prospective firearms identification card holders to undergo live fire training and bans gun modifications that turn semiautomatic firearms into automatic ones.
The lawmaker who wrote the bill goes on to claim that it’s about making everyone safer, but let’s take a look at Massachusetts for a moment.
They already have universal background checks, yet criminals keep getting guns. They’re clearly getting them from outside the legal gun sales system.
While younger males are far more likely to use a firearm illegally than older folks or women, those who are going to do that sort of thing aren’t walking into their local gun store to buy a firearm, by and large. So there’s absolutely no chance of this law actually impacting your average Boston gang-banger, for example, even if they currently have a clear criminal record.
And if they did decide to do so because they have a clear record, do you think that mandatory training is somehow going to dissuade them from being criminal thugs? I’m a big believer that training is good, though I oppose mandatory training at any point, yet I have to admit that training doesn’t change someone’s nature. So how is mandatory training going to impact criminal misuse of a firearm?
We also know that about one percent of all “gun deaths” are accidental/negligent shootings. If mandatory training were to have any impact at all, it would be among these incidents. However, they’re also only a tiny percentage of the overall issue. Even if it completely stamped out such incidents entirely, it’s unlikely anyone would even notice in the “gun death” statistics.
And let’s be real here, it won’t be that effective. Mandatory training is a checklist item. They go through the motions, do enough to get through it, and then forget it because they were forced to undergo it. It doesn’t sink in like training people actively choose to seek out.
Couple that with the confusing nature of the law and there’s really absolutely no defense for this travesty.
