The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted in overwhelming support of an updated gun violence reform bill which – among other things – aims to curb the rise of ghost guns pouring into the Commonwealth.
Wednesday’s 120-38 vote is a response to last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined New York’s concealed carry laws to be unconstitutional.
For the past several months the Bay State’s politicos have been working to ensure the state’s gun laws, which are similar to the ones in New York, fall in line with the high court’s ruling.
The latest gun reform bill is an update to the original piece of legislation Rep. Micheal Day, D-Middlesex, filed over the summer. Since its filing, the bill has been heavily scrutinized by some gun owners and law enforcement groups that claim it infringes on their Second Amendment rights and won’t stop crime.
Jim Wallace, the executive director of the Gun Owners Action League, a gun-rights organization, described the bill as a “flat-out tantrum” in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But, “modernizing our firearm statutes is not an attack on anyone’s rights, far from it,” Day told his colleagues in the House chamber. “It’s ensuring that we’re doing everything we can to protect the residents of Commonwealth.”
Since July 1, there have been 90 separate shootings in the Commonwealth, which have left 40 people dead and 86 injured, Day said.
“We are in the midst of a public health crisis and it is unrelenting,” he said. “‘Thoughts and prayers’ are not enough.”
The revised measure makes slight modifications to where people can carry firearms, expands the state’s assault weapons ban to include firearms developed after 2004, and aims to stem the flow of illegal firearms.
The bill also includes language that prohibits someone from bringing a gun into schools or government buildings and polling locations.
The House unanimously voted on an amendment to exclude law enforcement from this prohibition, a major win for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
People wishing to bring a firearm into private residences must obtain permission from the homeowner, the bill said. However, businesses could prohibit the carrying of firearms onto their property.
A major focus of the bill is also cracking down on “ghost guns” or untraceable firearms, by registering them with the state. As ghost guns are becoming more common Day said he hopes that serializing these firearms will help police trace where they are coming from and who’s putting them out on the street.
The updated legislation requires receivers – the part of the gun that contains the firing mechanism – to be serialized, but not the barrels or feeding device.
The House bill has been met with praise from gun safety advocates and lawmakers who’ve been pushing for the Legislature to act on Day’s bill since it was first proposed.
“We fully support this bill,” said Jennifer Robinson, the co-leader for the Massachusetts chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “We really feel like this is the time for some movement.”
In the past two years, gun deaths in the U.S. have risen by over 50 percent, according to an April report from the Pew Research Center.
Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Hampden, the chairperson of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, has said that the jarring statistics are representative of a public health crisis, one where guns are a contributing factor.
Gonzalez represents Holyoke, where a shooting earlier this month led to a pregnant woman being injured and the death of her child. He said the bill’s “cost should not be the question. The answer is what will be the ultimate cost if we do nothing.”
Pleading with his colleagues Gonzalez said, “today I stand and urge you to stand with me. With the thousands of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, Republicans and Democrats, that are burying their child every single day.”
Although the bill is making deep strides in gun safety provisions, it’s still was still met with heavy opposition, namely from gun rights activists.
“It’s an absolute mess,” Wallace said referring to the new House bill. “From beginning to end, there’s literally nothing in there that’s going to prevent crime or, or even reduce it.”
Joining Wallace was the House’s Republican wing which expressed heavy skepticism in regard to whether the bill could actually curb gun violence.
Rep. David K. Muradian, Jr., R-Worcester, called the legislation an “egregious infringement” on all lawful gun owners of Massachusetts. He said that creating further legislation on firearms doesn’t reduce gun violence.
Muradian criticized the gun violence data Day cited because it did not differentiate between someone who was in lawful or illegal possession of a firearm.
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“Passing such an overreaching piece of legislation where our laws are already some of the strongest in the country with actual data showing a 2% death rate in Massachusetts, to me, seems extreme,” he said.
Peter J. Durant, R-Worcester, said that legislators need to focus more on prosecuting criminals who would engage in “felonious acts” instead of restricting firearms.
“Firearms of any sort or capacity are perfectly safe in the right hands. Let’s not leave them only in the wrong hands, he said. “Instead, maybe we can focus on the social issues that plague our society.”
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