Mass. Lawmaker Seeks To Repeal Last Year’s Sweeping Anti-Gun Law

Final yr, we lined how sweeping anti-gun laws handed by the Massachusetts Legislature and signed into legislation by Gov. Maura Healey resulted in a petition drive to place a measure to repeal the legislation on the state poll and numerous courtroom challenges.

Now, a state senator has introduced that he’ll introduce a measure this legislative session to repeal the legislation, together with a collection of payments to attempt to strike down some particular parts of final yr’s legislation.

The measure, which went into impact in early October after the governor connected an emergency preamble, made numerous modifications. It raised the age to personal a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun to 21 years outdated, expanded definitions for modifications and elements that convert a semi-auto right into a full-auto firearm and banned them, prohibited so-called “ghost weapons” and likewise expanded the checklist of locations the place carrying a firearm is banned to incorporate authorities buildings, polling locations and colleges.

The legislation additionally expanded the commonwealth’s banned checklist of so-called “assault weapons,” made the state’s “red-flag” legislation much more unconstitutional by enabling a broader vary of individuals to report gun homeowners, required standardized security coaching, together with a live-fire element, for all firearm license candidates, established an ineffective fee to review the funding construction for violence prevention companies and created one other ineffective fee to look at the standing, feasibility, and utility of sensible weapons and microstamping.

In response to a latest report in The Berkshire Eagle, Republican State Sen. Peter Durant plans to file the repeal measure this week regardless of his celebration being far outnumbered in each legislative our bodies.

“Whereas we acknowledge that this will probably be an uphill battle, it’s a battle value pursuing,” Durant stated at a press convention. “Authorized challenges are already underway, however we imagine the Legislative Department, the place this downside originated, can and may present a quicker decision.”

In response to the Eagle report, Durant’s different laws will handle a few of the “extra egregious sections” of the legislation together with gun registration, semi-auto rifles and shotguns, live-fire coaching necessities, a nonresident ban on looking with semi-autos and pre-ban firearm magazines.

Throughout the press convention, Durant said that the legislation had confirmed ineffective, particularly highlighting the latest arrest of Leonardo Andujar Sanchez. An unlawful immigrant, Sanchez was lately apprehended at a state-run household shelter with medication and an AR-15.

“And he doesn’t care what our legal guidelines are,” Durant instructed reporters. “He’s acquired an AR-15 and he’s dealing medication out of one of many motels. So, who’re these legal guidelines meant to guard, or who’re they meant to hurt? That’s the issue that now we have right here.”

In mid-October final yr, organizers of a poll effort to repeal the legislation introduced that they’d collected sufficient signatures—over 90,000—on an initiative petition to place the query on the 2026 state poll. Efforts to put the measure on the 2024 poll had been thwarted when Gov. Healey added the emergency preamble to the brand new legislation.