Massachusetts Gun Restrictions Facing Another Challenge

The brand new sweeping gun-control package deal not too long ago expedited into legislation by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is going through one other in an extended line of authorized challenges.

After the legislation was handed by the legislature, it shortly turned a goal for gun-rights advocates. An initiative petition instantly started circulating in an try and get a query overturning the legislation on the state poll in 2026, and at the very least two lawsuits, together with one by the Massachusetts-based Gun House owners’ Motion League (GOAL) have been filed.

Now, a gun store proprietor from Bellingham, Massachusetts, has file a lawsuit difficult the brand new legislation. Gino Recchia, proprietor of Mass Armament, filed the grievance Friday in federal courtroom on the grounds that the legislation infringes on the Second Modification rights of him and his enterprise. In accordance with the grievance, the enterprise at Mass Armament “is centered, and has been developed, round firearms and large-capacity magazines prohibited by legislation.” An estimated 70 % of the shop’s enterprise can be misplaced beneath the brand new limitations, the grievance states.

“I’d say I can’t consider it, however I can,” Recchia mentioned of the governor expediting the legislation in a video posted on Instagram final week. “However that is Massachusetts, and boy do our legislators not look after our civil rights within the slightest.”

Recchia additionally instructed that these in opposition to the legislation ought to ensure that the governor is aware of how they really feel in regards to the scenario.

“If you wish to categorical your displeasure to the governor’s workplace, the quantity is 617-725-4005. You may also go on to the governor’s Instagram and touch upon all of her current posts about how you are feeling about all this. We’re going to maintain amassing signatures as a result of it’s the precise factor to do. The battle’s not over.”

The measure makes various adjustments that may have an effect on gun homeowners. It raises the age to personal a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun to 21 years previous, expands definitions for modifications and components that convert a semi-auto right into a full-auto firearm and bans them, prohibits so-called “ghost weapons” and likewise expends the checklist of locations the place carrying a firearm is banned to incorporate authorities buildings, polling locations and faculties.

The legislation additionally provides extra firearms to the commonwealth’s banned checklist of so-called “assault weapons,” makes the state’s “red-flag” legislation much more unconstitutional enabling extra classes of individuals to report gun homeowners, requires standardized security coaching, together with a dwell hearth part, for all firearm license candidates, establishes a nugatory fee to review the funding construction for violence prevention companies and establishes an equally nugatory fee to review the standing, feasibility and utility of sensible weapons and microstamping.

Together with the present lawsuits, the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation additionally plans to problem the legislation.

“With Governor Healey’s signature, Massachusetts has enacted one of the vital egregious and freedom-restricting legal guidelines within the historical past of the Commonwealth,” the group mentioned in a launched assertion. “NRA can be difficult this legislation to revive the rights assured to Bay Staters by the U.S. Structure.”