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Question 9: Keep or repeal the 2024 Gun Control Law

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This question is different from the eight others because it is a referendum, not an initiative petition. The sponsors are not trying to create something new, they are wanting to reverse something that has already been enacted. And that something is the 2024 Act Modernizing Firearm Laws.

This act is not for the casual reader. Weighing in at 159 sections on 116 printed pages, this is a massive and substantive reform package that took two years to craft and negotiate. The principal sections can be summarized in the following bullet points: 

Initially, there are many hurdles in reversing 195 sections and 116 pages of legislation. The repeal of a chapter does not revive any previous statute, except in case of a referendum petition. But that causes tremendous practical problems.

Some of the sections that were added or amended might have been amended since. Just from a scrivener’s perspective, this would be a total mess. If this were to pass the legislature would likely have to pass rehabilitative legislation just to fix all the errors that were created by reversing 116 pages of legislation. 

Next, the question arises, to exactly what do the opponents of this law object? Well, let’s read what Toby Leary of the Civil Rights Coalition has to say in the “Information for Voters” pamphlet:

He says that Chapter 135 is an “unnecessary reinvention” of state firearms law. Before Chapter 135 the Commonwealth already “had some of the strictest gun laws in the country” (which is true). He says that the law is “not about public safety” but is a deeply flawed, 116-page piece of bureaucratic overreach.” He says that it mandates an “expensive, real-time electronic tracking system that the state hasn’t funded and doesn’t know how to build.” It “forces local police departments to enforce a confusing patchwork of vague rules.” The law also required “dozens of clarifications for rules that treat harmless historical re-enactors and antique hobbyists like criminals.”

Well, most of those arguments are just characterizations of things he and his cohort apparently don’t like. None of them are things that (even if true) couldn’t be fixed with small amounts of additional legislation.

No legislation is perfect. However, instead of proposing to just reject all of the many reforms, the opponents of gun reform could have chosen to target what they view as the most problematic part of the reform and amend that. But they did not choose to do so.

And it’s not an argument to say that we should have no gun reform because Massachusetts has the second lowest per capita rate of gun deaths in the nation (after Hawaii). There are still plenty of gun deaths here in the Commonwealth that we shouldn’t try to prevent more.

Still, I understand that gun owners often feel put upon. But gun owners must also register their cars, and that means that (between Chapter 89 and Chapter 90) they are subject to 314 separate sections. And yet, car ownership endures.

Second Amendment Jurisprudence

We also need to acknowledge that despite the Legislature’s best efforts, there are many things about gun ownership (because of Supreme Court decisions) that they cannot regulate or prohibit.

The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence includes the following three landmark decisions:

  1. District of Columbia v. Heller (2008): Established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for lawful purposes, especially self-defense in the home, independent of militia service.
  2. McDonald v. Chicago (2010): Applied that constitutional protection to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
  3. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022): Established that the right generally extends to carrying firearms in public for self-defense and required governments to justify firearms restrictions by reference to the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

In practical terms, the principal prohibitions and limitations imposed by Supreme Court jurisprudence, then, are these:

Restriction Constitutional position
Ban ordinary handguns Prohibited. Heller invalidated a handgun ban because handguns are commonly used for lawful self-defense.
Prohibit functional firearms in the home Prohibited. The state cannot require firearms kept for self-defense to be rendered inoperable.
Prohibit public carrying of firearms generally Prohibited for ordinary, law-abiding citizens seeking to carry for self-defense.
Require a special justification for a carry license Prohibited. Massachusetts cannot require applicants to demonstrate an extraordinary need for protection.
Give licensing authorities unrestricted discretion Constitutionally impermissible when used to deny ordinary citizens their right to carry. Objective licensing requirements remain permissible.
Declare virtually all public places gun-free zones Constitutionally suspect. Specific sensitive locations can be regulated, but the designation cannot swallow the general right to carry.
Ban commonly possessed semiautomatic rifles Not definitively resolved by the Supreme Court. Restrictions on AR-15-style rifles remain a major constitutional controversy.
Ban large-capacity magazines Also unresolved at the Supreme Court level.

So, on balance, the pro-gun population shouldn’t feel too oppressed, because there really are significant things that cannot be prohibited by any state, city or town. And even some private businesses.

This is a Referendum, so be careful how you vote

Finally, I will just note that, because this is a referendum, the way the question works is that it asks whether we want to keep the firearms legislation. So if the answer to that is “yes,” then that is the button you have to fill in at the voting machines.

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