By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Massachusetts gun owners are in full battle mode against what CBS News has called a “wide-ranging gun control bill” that would ostensibly bring “sweeping reforms to gun safety” in the state, which translates to vast new restrictions, according to the Gun Owners Action League.
Posted on their website, GOAL has marked up its extensive objections to HD 4420, which covers ammunition magazines, so-called “safe storage,” so-called “assault weapons” and even creates a “special legislative commission to examine the existing government funding structure for violence prevention services in the commonwealth, including funding sources, initiatives and programs utilized, specific services funded, and communities served, and submit a report of its findings and recommendations.”
The group’s nine-page rebuttal was in reaction to a summary prepared by Rep. Michael S. Day, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.
According to GOAL Executive Director Jim Wallace, the bill was introduced on the contention it replaces a law deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Bruen ruling.
“I’m saying in response, ‘So, you’re making the law even more unconstitutional?’”
Wallace predicts that if the bill is passed in its current form, it will face multiple lawsuits. More GOAL arguments can be found here on the group’s website. Several sections of the bill raise concerns of gun owners, Wallace asserted.
For example, Section 173 would prohibit “all firearm possession in government administration buildings, polling locations, educational institutions and on all private property without the consent of the property owner.”
Sections 58 and 59 would add “appointees from Attorney General, Speaker, Senate President, House and Senate Minority leaders, Massachusetts State Police. Adds assault-style firearms roster and tasks board with conducting regular reviews. Requires EOPSS to update rosters for large capacity firearms, large capacity feeding devices, assault-style firearms and firearms approved for sale and use in the commonwealth at least three times a year.”
GOAL’s response to this: “These changes remove most experts from the Board and transforms it into a political entity. It is clear from the changes that the Board will be turned into an anti-civil rights task force.”
Sections in the bill also expand data compilation and reporting requirements for the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services and creates a publicly accessible online dashboard of anonymized aggregate firearm data to further firearms research and transparency, according to GOAL.
“No good can come from supplying the general public this type of data,” GOAL says. “Releasing to the general public the private information of lawful citizens is dangerous at the very least.”
GOAL also contends several sections in the bill expand the definition of firearm “to include its frame (or receiver) and its barrel in order to monitor and penalize the illegal purchase and manufacture of firearms. It also “requires the serialization of all firearms including any privately made firearms” and “criminalizes the possession, creation and transfer of all untraceable firearms. Updates and expands definitions of undetectable and covert firearms.”
According to GOAL, “Under the new definitions, a complete firearm may have an entire series of different serial numbers on its parts. As legal firearms are upgraded or repaired, it will cause tremendous confusion.”
Wallace says the legislation is so expansive that a single legal challenge probably cannot address all that is wrong. He suggested various lawsuits would have to challenge specific sections of the whole bill.
CBS News noted in its report, “An internal dispute between House and Senate leaders on which committee should hold a public hearing on the bill is what’s slowing things down. House lawmakers want the legislation vetted by the judiciary committee, while the Senate wants the public safety committee to take the lead.”
