Massachusetts hasn't been friendly to guns and gun owners for quite a while, which is ironic when you consider the American Revolution sparked off because the British tried to take people's guns in Lexington and Concord.
Still, they don't like them. In fact, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, in an effort to stave off a challenge to a new law, created downright havoc in the state.
You see, the new law would have created a whole bunch of new regulations, including one that required long guns to be put on a state registry as acceptable for purchase. Yet, when gun rights advocates seemed poised to challenge the law through the democratic processes – you know, that thing Democrats are always claiming to be the defenders of? – she used her executive authority to put the law into effect immediately.
At our sister site Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards noted some of the problems with the law, including how that registry is an issue:
Welcome to the "State of Confusion", Massachusetts gun store owner and 2A advocate Toby Leary tells Bearing Arms' Cam & Co. After Gov. Maura Healey on Wednesday attached an "emergency preamble" to a gun control bill she originally signed back in July, the state's sweeping new gun control law is now in effect and enforceable... except where it's not.
O'Leary says almost everyone impacted by the new law is confused about what is and isn't allowed right now, and state officials seem to be making it up as they go along. For instance, one of the provisions of the new law (officially known as Chapter 135 but called "The Devil's Snare" and the "Lawful Citizens Imprisonment Act" by the Gun Owners Action League) changes the definition of "firearm" in state statute, and now requires the state to approve rifles and shotguns by placing them on the state's Firearm Roster before they can be legally sold.
The current firearms roster doesn't list any long guns, which, under the clear letter of Chapter 135, means that those guns should be prohibited for sale. But Leary says he and other FFLs received a memo on Wednesday afternoon informing them that, for now anyway, they can continue to sell at least some of the long guns already in their inventory.
They said, 'don't worry about it! You can continue to sell any of the rifles and shotguns that you were allowed to sell before. As long as it doesn't violate any other statute, you go ahead can violate this statute. We're gonna let you do that while we get our act together, until we get the roster created, until we get the Firearms Control Advisory Board seated, until we work out what this all looks like, go ahead and sell some guns. Don't worry about it.'
That proves this wasn't an emergency. This wasn't a crisis. They're telling us we can continue to sell the guns that Healey found, 70 days after signing this law, to suddenly be such a threat that she had to sign an emergency preamble 70 days later. So it doesn't make any sense.
Of course, the problem is that O'Leary is thinking of emergency in the wrong way. It was, in fact, an emergency. It was an emergency to get the law into effect to create as many problems for law-abiding citizens because the law was being threatened by pro-gun advocates that most definitely exist in Massachusetts.
I'm not shocked that the measure is being implemented haphazardly and there's all kinds of confusion.
It seems O'Leary has seen issues with police departments refusing to issue concealed carry permits because of this law and the training mandate included. The issue is that the training mandate doesn't go into effect for another 18 months, thus causing a lot of confusion.
What irks me about this, and what should irk you, is that Healey shouldn't have been able to suddenly decide the law should go into effect right away. That's not power the executive should have at all. They shouldn't have it because stuff like this is the inevitable result of a law suddenly going into effect weeks or months before it's supposed to. Suddenly, people are scrambling to deal with the new law when they'd believed they had plenty of time to prepare.
The only thing that remotely keeps this from being outright tyranny is that the legislature actually passed the measure in question.
Even then, they didn't intend for it to go into effect right away. That shouldn't be something the governor can just do.
But the authority exists for, as noted, emergencies. This isn't one as the law was intended. Fear over losing a vote isn't an emergency, especially since this is Massachusetts. There was a very good chance they wouldn't lose the vote.
But the truth is that those who would strip you of your gun rights are also inclined to do other tyrannical things if given half a chance. This is just another example to illustrate the point perfectly.