Massachusetts gun owners are promising widespread non-compliance if the Democrat-dominated legislature passes the latest draft of a restrictive gun control measure which, by no surprise, is supported by the gun prohibition lobby.
Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners’ Action League, was quoted by the Daily Hampshire Gazette telling lawmakers HD 4607 is “the most egregious attack on civil rights I have seen from a government in this century, in Massachusetts and nationwide.”
Wallace, in a text to this correspondent, noted, “The entire Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association voted unanimously to oppose it.”
His remark was confirmed by the Gazette report, which quoted the organization’s executive director, retired Chief Mark Leahy.
Leahy’s written testimony noted in part, “The registration of firearms will not reduce gun violence. Limiting where lawfully licensed firearms holders may go — including your off-duty police officers and state troopers — will not reduce gun violence. Criminals will not be deterred by these measures. While there is merit to addressing ghost guns, that can be handled in a stand-alone bill.”
GOAL has done a detailed analysis of the bill, which may be read here.
Battleground Massachusetts: Gun Owners Blast Bill, Promise Non-Compliance: Gun Owners’ Action League HD.460… by AmmoLand Shooting Sports News on Scribd
According to WCVB News, gun retailer Toby Leary told the panel of legislators, “Us complying for decades with unconstitutional laws has done nothing but whet their appetite for continuing the gun confiscation schemes.”
Leary is co-owner of Cape Gun Works in Hyannis, and one of the people who vowed non-compliance.
Democrat lawmakers steadfastly supported the bill. One legislator, Democrat State Rep. Bud Williams, was quoted by WCVB insisting, “We stand with this bill. And we plan and hopefully to push this through.”
Backers included veteran anti-gunner John Rosenthal, founder and head of Stop Handgun Violence, one of the Northeast’s most vocal gun prohibition lobbying groups. He was also quoted by the Gazette, calling HD 4607 “an incredibly thoughtful bill that has no inconvenience whatsoever [on] law-abiding gun owners.”
But GOAL’s Wallace definitely disagrees with that assessment. During his remarks, the longtime Second Amendment advocate said there is nothing in the legislation to reduce crime or suicide. He predicted hundreds of thousands of Bay State gun owners will refuse to comply.
“We’re done,” Wallace reportedly said. “Twenty-five years of trying to comply with the garbage laws that have only increased crime and suicide in Massachusetts, and now you’re going to do it again, and make it worse?”
One of the more interesting tenets of the new version of the bill is a requirement that some components of so-called “ghost guns” be serialized. Nobody seemed to understand that with such serialization, the firearms in question would technically no longer meet the definition of a “ghost gun.”
There is no small irony in the timing of this debate. While anti-gunners are trying to disarm and restrict gun owners here, officials in Israel are reportedly scrambling to ease restrictive gun laws there to allow private citizens to obtain guns to defend their country against Hamas terrorists who have launched a bloody, murderous attack from neighboring Gaza.
Massachusetts gun control laws have become increasingly restrictive. This was one reason why Smith & Wesson moved its headquarters from the state and relocated to Maryville, Tennessee. The official opening of the new S&W facility in that state was attended by people from all over the map, including several VIPs, among them U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn.
As noted by the Associated Press, S&W President and CEO Mark Smith pointed to a friendlier regulatory environment in Tennessee than Massachusetts.
But the flight of Smith & Wesson to a gun-friendly environment—taking hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue with it—evidently has not cooled anti-gun jets in the Bay State. The questionable legislation, as analyzed by the seven-page GOAL critique, “was supposedly drafted in consideration of the concerns expressed about the original (bill). While there were some changes for sure, they only managed to make a very toxic anti-civil rights bill and little less toxic.”
Passage of the legislation will likely attract legal action by various firearms organizations, probably in federal court.
Massachusetts, historians will recall, was the birthplace of the American revolution, and the shooting war started when the existing government at the time attempted to seize the arms of the colonial militia. Today, there is no militia to lay siege to Boston, but it is a certainty Bay State gun owners will descend on the state capitol there to oppose the legislation.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
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