In the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Florida, Attorney General Maura Healey is stepping up Massachusetts’ ban on assault weapons and warning gun manufacturers and dealers against selling copycat weapons.
Healey issued an enforcement notice Wednesday defining copycat weapons as guns with the same internal operating systems or key components that are interchangeable with those of assault weapons. Her notice drew praise from some and ire from others.
“These guns are the weapons of choice for mass shooters, and we will do everything we can to prevent the kinds of tragedies here that have occurred in places like Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown and Aurora,” Healey said. “The gun industry has openly defied our laws here in Massachusetts for nearly two decades. That ends today.”
Dealers who have these guns on hand cannot sell them to buyers in Massachusetts and must transfer them to out-of-state jurisdictions. The enforcement will not apply to gun owners who bought or sold these weapons before July 20.
Despite Gov. Charlie Baker’s remark that Healey “has the authority and the jurisdiction” to make and enforce this clarification, many gun owners feel attacked, Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners Action League in Massachusetts, said Thursday.
“This is not a clarification, this is a completely new set of rules,” Wallace said. “We have one person who unilaterally made a decision to turn hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people into felons overnight.”
Although Wallace was aware the clarification does not apply to people who already possess these weapons, he said it is still threatening because that could change in the future.
The action league plans a rally Saturday at the Statehouse to protest the “rogue actions” of Healey, and Wallace hopes that event will command the public’s attention.
“This isn’t a gun issue anymore. This just turned into a civil rights issue,” Wallace said. “I think we’re going to see massive lawsuits and rattling in the Statehouse.”
But others believe Healey has done a service by reminding gun owners and dealers of existing laws and expecting continued cooperation throughout the state.
“It is important to understand that today’s enforcement notice from Attorney General Healey is not a new law, nor a new set of regulations … To her credit, she has chosen to remind gun shops of the law’s provisions prior to conducting inspections,” said Norwood Chief William G. Brooks III, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, in a statement released by the attorney general’s office.
Others also have commended Healey’s clarification as a much needed step toward safety and security after five weeks marked by mass violence in Orlando, Florida, and killings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
But while the crackdown aims to ensure public safety, Kirk Whatley, a firearms safety instructor in Hadley, said he expects it to have the opposite effect. Tighter gun restrictions yield more violence, Whatley said, and the types of criminals who would use such a weapon for mass shootings will not be deterred by Healey’s clarification.
“It’s about as difficult as predicting that the sun will rise in the east to predict an uptick in violent crime after this,” Whatley said. “The idea Healey had will, at best, have no impact on violent crime and at worst lead to more victims.”
Rifles like the AR-15 are often misbranded, Whatley said. While they have a reputation of being “instruments of murder,” Whatley said many people use them for target practice, hunting and personal protection — although he does not believe they are the ideal choice for the latter.
A true assault rifle fires more than one round per squeeze of the trigger, Whatley said, but those available to civilians will only fire a single round per squeeze.
Better firearms education and eliminating gun-free zones are the keys to better public safety, Whatley said. People looking to harm large groups see gun-free zones as ideal targets, since there will be no one to challenge them, he said.
Massachusetts has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country, and Whatley said he does not believe Healey’s clarification will do a better job of protecting citizens from mass violence than any other law.
“If Attorney General Healey believes that she can come up with one law that criminals, terrorists and insane people will obey, I’d like to see it,” Whatley said.