Vote no on Question 9 and let Massachusetts write a better gun law

Opinion

By Charles Whitaker Bain

Right of Center

WASHINGTON — Massachusetts gun owners have until Wednesday to register their firearms with the state under a law that voters may repeal six days later. That sequence, reported by the Associated Press, tells you most of what is wrong with how the commonwealth handled its 2024 gun statute. On Nov. 3, voters should reject it by voting no on Question 9 and send the Legislature back to write something narrower, funded and defensible.

Start with the process

Massachusetts gives citizens a check on the Legislature: opponents of the 2024 law gathered enough petition signatures to force this referendum, the AP reported. Ordinarily, as the AP explained, a qualifying referendum petition puts the law on hold until the election. That did not happen here, because Gov. Maura Healey signed an emergency provision that made the law take effect immediately in 2024, two years before the vote, the AP reported.

The governor had the legal power to do that. But using it on a contested, sweeping policy meant that by the time voters weigh in, gun owners will already have been required to comply. Toby Leary, who chairs The Civil Rights Coalition, the group that led the petition drive, called that “a total violation of people’s rights,” according to the AP. One need not share his phrasing to see the problem. A referendum is supposed to be a real choice, not a ratification of facts already on the ground.

The registry is the heart of it

The provision that most deserves skepticism is the one supporters talk about least. The law directs the state’s Department of Criminal Justice Information Services to build a “real time electronic firearms registration system” and requires that all firearms possessed in the commonwealth be registered through it, according to the text of the law published in the voter guide. Failing to register carries fines and, for repeat offenses, possible jail time.

Washington decided long ago that this was a line it would not cross. Federal law, in the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, bars any rule requiring “that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established,” as 18 U.S.C. 926(a) puts it. That prohibition has stood for four decades for a reason: a list of who owns what, and where they live, is a powerful thing to put in government hands. Leary’s warning that a hacked database would be “a wish list for nefarious actors” to the AP is not paranoia; it is a fair question for any state that collects sensitive data.

The opposition’s official argument adds that the state has not funded the system. The commonwealth’s own budget office, in its fiscal statement, describes significant spending on training, licensing processes and IT infrastructure since 2024 but offers no figure for what the finished registry will cost. Voters are being asked to endorse a program without a price tag.

What supporters get right

Conservatives should be honest about the other side’s strongest points. Massachusetts has a gun death rate well below the national average, which the yes campaign puts at 70% lower in its official argument. Ghost guns and auto-conversion devices are real dangers, and no serious person wants a teenager printing an untraceable pistol in a bedroom. The Giffords Law Center argues that registration helps police trace trafficked guns, the AP reported. And the public appears to be on the supporters’ side: a WBUR and University of Massachusetts poll found 70% of likely voters backing the law and 21% opposed, WBUR reported.

But the best parts of the law do not require the worst. Devices designed solely to convert a weapon into a machine gun already fall within the federal definition of a machine gun under 26 U.S.C. 5845(b). Serial-number requirements for home-built frames could stand on their own. So could the expanded list of people who can seek an extreme risk protection order, which still requires a court order. A Legislature that passed the 2024 bill 124 to 33 in the House and 35 to 5 in the Senate, according to the voter guide, would have no trouble passing those pieces again in a cleaner bill.

Federalism cuts both ways

Republicans believe states should be free to set their own gun policies within the limits of the Second Amendment, and Massachusetts is entitled to be stricter than Idaho, where voters this fall are being asked to choose an official state gun, the AP reported. That diversity is the system working. But federalism also means a state answers to its own voters, and those voters deserve a law that was paused while they deliberated, a registry with a known cost and real privacy protections, and a debate on each major piece rather than a 116-page take-it-or-leave-it package.

A no vote on Question 9 is not a vote against gun safety. It is a vote for doing gun safety the right way. Massachusetts can do better, and its Legislature can start in January.

Charles Whitaker Bain is the pen name of a Washington Inquisitor opinion columnist writing from an establishment Republican perspective. The views expressed are the author’s own and not those of The Washington Inquisitor.