The strange and sordid history of Massachusetts’ newest gun control laws has taken yet another twist. Attorney General Andrea Campbell has filed the state’s response to the first legal challenge to Chapter 135, which takes aim at the new training mandates imposed by lawmakers.
In her motion to dismiss the litigation filed by the Gun Owners Action League and several individual plaintiffs, Campbell trotted out a variety of arguments in the hope that one of them will stick.
“Plaintiffs’ threadbare and conclusory allegations that the regime subjects them to ‘burdens, expenses, and delays’ does not come close to overcoming the presumption that it is constitutional,” Assistant Attorney General Tim Casey wrote in a 45-page legal brief filed with the AG’s motion. “Their Second Amendment challenge therefore fails on the merits.”
Campbell also argues that the legal challenge against the state’s new firearm training requirements is “moot” because Gov. Maura Healey and lawmakers have delayed implementation of those rules until April 2026.
The rule requires prospective gun owners to get a “firearms safety certificate” and complete a live-fire training course to obtain a firearm identification card or license to carry.
“Once the court strips away the speculation and conclusory statements in the complaint — what remains fails, as a matter of law, to state a plausible claim,” Campbell said.
Campbell’s motion before the court is pretty threadbare itself. Clocking in at just four pages, the Attorney General barely deigned to respond to the arguments raised by GOAL and the Massachusetts residents who are challenging the licensing components of Chapter 135.
The AG’s strongest argument is that the lawsuit is moot, or at least premature, because the state legislature went back and delayed implementation of the new training mandates for 18 months after GOAL and the individual plaintiffs filed suit. I don’t think that action actually renders the litigation moot, but a judge might very well conclude that the requirements aren’t ready to be challenged because they’re not yet in effect.
Campbell’s claim that the plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue, on the other hand, is awfully weak. The AG maintains that those plaintiffs who already possess a Licence to Carry lack standing because “they are already licensed and do not (and cannot) allege that any future renewal application would be ‘futile’, while the unlicensed plaintiffs lack standing because “they cannot demonstrate any harm resulting from the licensing scheme that is caused by the statute.”
Virtually all of the plaintiffs, however, allege that the training mandates will cause harm because of the “expense, inconvenience, and other impermissible burdens” they impose, including a discretionary “suitability” provision that turns the state’s licensing system into a “may issue” regime that violates the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen.
Though many of Chapter 135’s voluminous provisions are constitutionally suspect, challenging them in court has been like playing Whack-a-Mole thanks to the unprecedented moves by the Democrats in control of the statehouse and Gov. Maura Healey. Beyond the legislature’s belated amendment delaying the training mandates for 18 months, Healey signed an emergency preamble to the legislation months after she originally signed the bill into law so she could keep the law in place while a referendum to overturn it via the ballot box is underway.
That preamble put the law into effect immediately, but many portions of Chapter 135 were then put on hold by the governor and the head of the Massachusetts State Police, including changes to the state’s firearm roster that would have prevented the lawful sale of almost every rifle and shotgun going forward.
While the architects of the sweeping gun control law claim the bill isn’t flawed in the slightest, the fact that so much of Chapter 135 has been delayed is a clear sign that the state wasn’t ready to enforce many of its mandates when the governor signed the emergency preamble. Heck, the fact that the state has delayed implementation for more than a year in some cases is pretty strong evidence that the state had no way of enforcing the law even if Healey never signed the emergency preamble and Chapter 135 took effect in late October as originally intended.
Those moves aren’t a good faith effort to address the concerns of gun owners. They’re designed to avoid accountability for the unconstitutional nature of Chapter 135 for as long as possible. If U.S. District Judge (and Biden appointee) Myong Joun accepts Campbell’s argument and dismisses GOAL’s lawsuit, that won’t end the legal dispute over Chapter 135’s training mandates. It will only delay the legal smackdown that awaits the state of Massachusetts for turning the right of the people to keep and bear arms into a privilege doled out on a discretionary basis by the state’s licensing authorities.
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