Massachusetts should keep its gun law and fix what needs fixing

Opinion

By Margaret Hollister

The Big Tent

WASHINGTON — Next Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will be asked a question that sounds technical but is really about whether a state can keep its own promise to protect people. Question 9 asks whether to keep “An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws,” the 2024 statute that bans untraceable ghost guns, treats Glock switches and other auto-conversion devices as machine guns, and raises to 21 the age to own semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. Voters should keep it. A yes vote does exactly that.

Start with how the law was made. It was not slipped through in the dark. The House passed it 124 to 33 and the Senate 35 to 5 on July 18, 2024, according to the secretary of the commonwealth’s voter guide. Those are lopsided, veto-proof margins, the kind a legislature produces when it has decided the state’s gun code needs an update.

What the law actually does

Opponents talk about the law as if it were one giant registry. Read the attorney general’s summary and a more ordinary picture emerges. It requires serial numbers on firearms, including unfinished frames and receivers that can be finished at home, closing the loophole that lets a buyer assemble an untraceable gun from a kit or a 3D printer. It lets school administrators and licensed health care providers ask a court for an extreme risk protection order when someone is a danger to themselves or others. It bars guns in polling places, schools and government buildings, with exceptions. It requires the State Police to provide training and a test for new license applicants. And it creates a public dashboard of anonymized firearm data so that policymakers can see where crime guns come from.

None of that is exotic. Serial numbers are how police trace a gun used in a crime back to the people who sold it. Extreme risk orders are designed for the moment when a family member or clinician sees warning signs before a tragedy. Keeping guns out of polling places protects the very election in which this question is being decided.

The record supports it

The campaign for a yes vote, in its official argument, says Massachusetts has a gun death rate 70% lower than the national average. That did not happen by accident; it reflects decades of the state choosing licensing and accountability over a free-for-all. The 2024 law extends that approach to threats that did not exist when the old code was written, such as printed guns and conversion devices that turn a pistol into an automatic weapon.

The registry is the part opponents attack most, so it deserves a direct answer. The Giffords Law Center says registration laws “help law enforcement solve crimes, track down stolen and trafficked guns,” and that they tell officers what guns may be present when they respond to a call, according to the Associated Press. Hawaii and the District of Columbia already run comprehensive registries, and six other states register some firearms, the AP reported. Massachusetts is not inventing something untested.

The best case against it

The opposition deserves a fair hearing. The Civil Rights Coalition, which forced the referendum, argues in the voter guide that the 116-page law burdens local police with paperwork and mandates an electronic registration system the state has not funded. Its chair, Toby Leary, told the AP that a database of gun owners could be hacked and become “a wish list for nefarious actors.” And gun owners have a genuine grievance about timing: they must register their firearms by Wednesday, before voters have their say, because Gov. Maura Healey signed an emergency provision that put the law into effect in 2024, the AP reported.

Those are serious points, and the answer to them is to fix the implementation, not to throw out the law. If the registry needs more money, the Legislature can appropriate it. If data security needs strengthening, lawmakers can write tougher rules. If the rollout has been confusing, the state can clarify it. Repeal would do none of that. It would wipe out the ghost-gun ban, the machine-gun definitions and the expanded protection orders along with the registry. And the state’s own budget office says in its fiscal statement that repeal would require the commonwealth to spend resources suspending or redirecting investments it has already made in training, licensing and technology.

Voters already seem to understand

A WBUR poll conducted with the University of Massachusetts found 70% of likely voters supporting the law and 21% opposed, WBUR reported Oct. 19. That is a broad coalition, and it should not be read as hostility to gun owners. The law preserves, in the words of Ruth Zakarin of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, “a legal pathway to gun ownership while also putting guardrails in place that keep people safe,” as she told the AP.

Democrats are at their best when they govern the way this law was written: by listening, legislating in the open and keeping what works. Massachusetts voters have a chance to affirm that approach. They should vote yes on Question 9.

Margaret Hollister is the pen name of a Washington Inquisitor opinion columnist writing from an establishment Democrat perspective. The views expressed are the author’s own and not those of The Washington Inquisitor.