Massachusetts' New Registry Kicks in Before Vote to Potentially End It

Next week's midterm elections will probably have us spending a lot of digital ink talking about what they mean and whatnot, but a few cases are especially interesting. In particular, Massachusetts is drawing a lot of interest due to a ballot referendum that could scuttle the state's latest gun control scheme.

While it's unlikely to be successful, the effort to kill the law is real and viable enough to get the question on the ballot.

Unfortunately, there's a little bit of a quirk. The deadline to register guns is before the vote.

Massachusetts gun owners face a registry deadline

Residents in Massachusetts face a Wednesday deadline to register their firearms with the state. The referendum on whether to repeal that requirement happens six days later. That sequence has frustrated some gun owners.

“It’s a total violation of people’s rights to require this before they have their chance to vote on it,” said Toby Leary, chair of The Civil Rights Coalition, a group formed to lead the effort to repeal the gun law.

Normally, when a referendum petition is submitted, a law is placed on hold until an election can occur. But Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed an emergency provision making the gun law take effect immediately in 2024 — two years ahead of the referendum.

Advocates tout the measure as the most comprehensive update in a decade to the state’s firearms laws. In addition to establishing a state firearm registry, it bars “ghost guns” that lack serial numbers and devices that convert guns to fire rapidly, and expands a ban on assault-style weapons. It also broadens a “red flag” law to add healthcare providers and school administrators to the list of those who can ask courts to temporarily remove guns from people who pose a risk to themselves or others.

“This legislation both preserves a legal pathway to gun ownership while also putting guardrails in place that keep people safe,” said Ruth Zakarin, who chairs the campaign committee backing the gun law and is CEO of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.

I'm going to go a little further than Mr. Leary and say that a registration is a total violation of people's rights simply by existing, whether the vote precedes it or not. I'm sure that's what he believes as well, of course, and I'm not trying to imply otherwise. I'm simply pointing out that even if the vote approves of the measure, it's still a gross violation of the Second Amendment.

There is no other product so tied to a particular right as a gun and the Second Amendment. To single that product out for particular attention and require government registration of that product is an alarming precedent, and while Massachusetts isn't the first state to do it, that doesn't make it the least bit better.

But to do it when there's a pending vote is...well, I want to call it inconceivable, but I don't have a problem conceiving Massachusetts doing such a thing. That's the problem.

As for Zarakin's comments, I'm just going to point out that criminals will not register their guns. They'll either steal them or buy them on the black market, thus making it so the registry doesn't keep anyone safe, and the idea that this "preserves a legal pathway to gun ownership" is laughable. It's a blatant act of disregarding the true purpose of the Second Amendment.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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