Bay State-based Second Amendment advocates took a short but cautious victory lap this week, when they learned the state Legislature had quietly nixed a plan to require prospective gun owners to attend live fire training.
According to the Gun Owners Action League, the change comes as “a likely response to GOAL’s federal lawsuit” over Chapter 135, or An act modernizing firearms laws.
That law represents “the most significant gun safety reform package that Massachusetts has seen in a decade,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said when Gov. Maura Healey signed it into the General Laws.
In addition to cracking down on unserialized firearms, or “ghost guns,” the new regulation comes with a long list of updated rules for keeping and carrying firearms. It also requires anyone applying for a new concealed carry weapons permit in Massachusetts to submit alongside their application “a basic firearms safety certificate.”
While most current licensees — those who were permitted before the law went into effect — are exempt from having to hand over a certificate, according to the law a new gun owners can only be issued a certificate after they’ve attended, among other coursework, “live firearms training.”
“No firearms safety instructor shall issue or cause to be issued any basic firearms safety certificate to any person who fails to meet minimum requirements of the prescribed course of study including, but not limited to, demonstrated competency in the use of firearms through class participation, satisfactory completion of the written examination as prescribed by the colonel (of the state police) and live firearms training,” section 74 of Chapter 135 reads, in part.
However, earlier this month when the Legislature passed an end-of-year supplemental budget, they quietly slipped in an amendment that would see that section, and the requirement for instructors to conduct live fire training, pushed back a full year-and-a-half.
The law previously indicated that section 75, which deals with how guns are traced after they are used in a suicide, would not go into effect for 18-months.
Jim Wallace, GOAL executive director, said the change is proof that lawmakers didn’t carefully read their own law before they sent it to the governor last July.
“This amendment to the new law is very telling of how Chapter 135 was never properly vetted by the public, the legislature and the state agencies tasked with enforcing this new law,” Wallace said in a statement.
Lawmakers, Wallace said, seemed quite certain when the law was passed that it was written in such a way that it would pass constitutional muster, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.
That case upended the way gun owners are licensed in the U.S. by making clear the state could not stand in the way of a person’s second amendment rights via a licensing process. The new law was supposed to work around that decision, Wallace said.
“If that was true, then why the delays,” Wallace said.
GOAL also noted a delay on a requirement for law enforcement officers and retailers to become trained on the state’s new gun laws. This decision, GOAL said, is “unconscionable” while An act modernizing firearms laws is still on the books and fully enforceable.
“While this can easily be considered a temporary victory for the 2A community, there are also some scary consequences involved,” the group wrote.
Originally Published:
