The National Rifle Association is teaming up with state affiliate Gun Owners Action League, a gun store, and several individual plaintiffs in a lawsuit that seeks to dismantle Massachusetts’ ban on “assault style” firearms; a designation so broad that almost every centerfire semi-automatic long gun on the market is prohibited for sale and possession for those not grandfathered in.
The complaint, known as Hanlon v. Campbell, accuses the state of depriving “plaintiffs and the law-abiding citizenry of the Commonwealth of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms” by blocking access to guns that are in common use for lawful purposes.
Last year, the Commonwealth enacted onerous firearms legislation that imposes sweeping arms bans, magazine restrictions, registration requirements, and licensing preconditions that are burdensome and unprecedented in our Nation’s historical tradition. Plaintiffs challenge the Act’s ban on so-called “assault-style” firearms and their “copies.” The Act bans the sale and acquisition of semiautomatic firearms that are commonly possessed and used for lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home, in violation of Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment Rights. The Commonwealth mislabels as “assault-style” firearms dozens of makes and models of common semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns and criminalizes their possession, ownership, sale, or other transfer.
The plaintiffs acknowledge that the First Circuit has previously upheld Massachusetts’ semi-auto ban, but argues “those cases were wrongly decided”, and that the lawsuit is necessary to “vindicate their Second Amendment rights.”
The plaintiffs are an interesting bunch; Peter Hanlon is a retired Captain in the Massachusetts Environmental Police,David Worman is an orthopedic surgeon, Nancy Trehub is a retired prosecutor, and Jeffrey Sacks is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. All of them are fine, upstanding citizens (and NRA members) who possess valid licenses to carry, but are still precluded from purchasing and possessing a wide variety of firearms that are available to most Americans.
The Act mislabels as “assault-style” firearms dozens of makes and models of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and common handguns, each of which is commonly possessed and utilized for self-defense and other lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens and sold to the same by licensed retailers, and criminalizes their possession, ownership, sale, or other transfer. The ban was implemented despite the fact that newly defined “assault-style” firearms, including the wildly popular AR–15s, “traditionally have been widely accepted as lawful possessions.”
As the lawsuit notes, while Chapter 135 specifically prohibits firearms by make, model, and feature, it also bans “[a]ny firearm[s] listed on the assault-style firearm roster,” which is administered by the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. The secretary of EOPSS has discretion to amend the assault-style firearms roster any time they choose, which is problematic enough, but as of today they haven’t “published the assault-style firearms roster, nor have they announced when such roster may be published or which firearms it will include.”
But because the Act confers discretionary authority upon the Secretary of the EOPSS to amend the Approved Firearms Roster “upon their own initiative,” FDLs, including Pioneer Valley Arms, have no way of knowing whether a firearm will be approved for sale or how long it will stay approved. The assault-style firearms roster may be published, updated, or amended at any time and may immediately prohibit firearms purchasers and retailers from acquiring, purchasing, inventorying, selling, leasing, loaning, or otherwise transferring otherwise lawful firearms. The publication, updating, or amending of an assault-style firearms roster would also prevent Pioneer Valley Arms from disposing of any of their current and future inventory that is listed on the roster.
Presumably someone who purchases a firearm that’s Massachusetts-compliant at the time but is banned by the secretary of EOPSS would be grandfathered in. Even if that is the case, that doesn’t mean some zealous anti-gun prosecutor wouldn’t still go after them. And as the complaint points out, this arbitrary ability to ban firearms puts gun stores in a bind because it can render large portions of their inventory off-limits for sale based on nothing more than the capricious whims of an anti-gun official.
In a statement, NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford declared “radical gun grabbers in Massachusetts have run roughshod on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” creating chaos in the Commonwealth and “turning lawful gun owners into felons overnight.” I’m thrilled to see the NRA and the other plaintiffs are taking on the gun ban portion of the law GOAL calls the “Lawful Citizens Disarmament Act”, though I also hope the Supreme Court has rendered bans like the one in Massachusetts null and void long before Hanlon reaches the justices.
Editor’s Note: Second Amendment organizations are challenging infringements on our Second Amendment rights across the country, and Bearing Arms is here to provide in-depth reporting and analysis of their efforts.
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