Mass. Lawmaker Seeks To Repeal Last Year’s Sweeping Anti-Gun Law 

Last year, we covered how sweeping anti-gun legislation passed by the Massachusetts Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Maura Healey resulted in a petition drive to put a measure to repeal the law on the state ballot and a number of court challenges.

Now, a state senator has announced that he will introduce a measure this legislative session to repeal the law, along with a series of bills to try to strike down some specific portions of last year’s law.

The measure, which went into effect in early October after the governor attached an emergency preamble, made a number of changes. It raised the age to own a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun to 21 years old, expanded definitions for modifications and parts that convert a semi-auto into a full-auto firearm and banned them, prohibited so-called “ghost guns” and also expanded the list of places where carrying a firearm is banned to include government buildings, polling places and schools.

The law also expanded the commonwealth’s banned list of so-called “assault weapons,” made the state’s “red-flag” law even more unconstitutional by enabling a broader range of people to report gun owners, required standardized safety training, including a live-fire component, for all firearm license applicants, established an ineffective commission to study the funding structure for violence prevention services and created another ineffective commission to examine the status, feasibility, and utility of smart guns and microstamping.

According to a recent report in The Berkshire Eagle, Republican State Sen. Peter Durant plans to file the repeal measure this week despite his party being far outnumbered in both legislative bodies.

“While we recognize that this will be an uphill battle, it is a fight worth pursuing,” Durant said at a press conference. “Legal challenges are already underway, but we believe the Legislative Branch, where this problem originated, can and should provide a faster resolution.”

According to the Eagle report, Durant’s other legislation will address some of the “more egregious sections” of the law including gun registration, semi-auto rifles and shotguns, live-fire training requirements, a nonresident ban on hunting with semi-autos and pre-ban firearm magazines.

During the press conference, Durant stated that the law had proven ineffective, specifically highlighting the recent arrest of Leonardo Andujar Sanchez. An illegal immigrant, Sanchez was recently apprehended at a state-run family shelter with drugs and an AR-15.

“And he doesn’t care what our laws are,” Durant told reporters. “He’s got an AR-15 and he’s dealing drugs out of one of the hotels. So, who are these laws meant to protect, or who are they meant to harm? That’s the problem that we have here.”

In mid-October last year, organizers of a ballot effort to repeal the law announced that they had collected enough signatures—over 90,000—on an initiative petition to put the question on the 2026 state ballot. Efforts to place the measure on the 2024 ballot were thwarted when Gov. Healey added the emergency preamble to the new law.