Massachusetts doesn’t recognize any concealed carry licenses issued by other states, which means that any non-resident who crosses the state line and wants to exercise their Second Amendment rights must first undergo the lengthy and burdensome process of obtaining a non-resident carry permit that requires (among other things) them to appear in person at the Firearms Records Bureau in Chelsea for their first application.
As you can imagine, that requirement and other mandates like having to renew your non-resident license on a yearly basis, along with the year-long wait time in processing applications, has a chilling effect on visitors keeping and bearing arms. But these draconian restrictions are hunky dory, according to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, which upheld the current non-resident licensing laws in a case decided on Tuesday.
The decision came after the Supreme Judicial Court heard a pair of cases jointly last year involving New Hampshire gun owners who were charged for unlawfully possessing firearms in Massachusetts without proper permits.
The cases further challenged Massachusetts’ authority to enforce licensing requirements after a 2022 US Supreme Court decision sharply limited government’s power to regulate firearms, leaving Massachusetts and other states grappling with how to maintain gun safety regimes. They drew national attention from Second Amendment and gun-violence-prevention groups who argued about whether Massachusetts, a state priding itself on low gun violence rates, could impose strict restrictions on out-of-state residents without violating the Constitution.
The SJC ruled that the charges against one defendant, who was charged with unlawful possession before the Supreme Court issued its Bruen decision, could be dismissed because the Massachusetts licensing laws he was charged under are “no longer permissible” after Bruen determined those laws violated the Second Amendment. But in the other case, in which charges were filed after Massachusetts updated its gun licensing regimen to adhere to the Second Amendment, the court determined state law was “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” and didn’t violate non-residents’ “right to travel or equal protection.”
While the non-resident permitting laws are “shall issue” according to the SJC, the application itself requires non-residents to state their reason for applying for a permit, which certainly suggests that licensing officials still have the discretion to reject a permit request based on subjective factors. That would put the permitting laws at odds with the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen, and that’s before taking into account the Court’s guidance that things like excessive fees and unduly long wait times can render “shall issue” regimes unconstitutional.
Even though the state’s highest court says the current permitting regime is constitutional, I’d say the laws are still ripe for a challenge in federal court. Demanding non-residents appear in person to apply is an untenable burden for many visitors, including myself. I’m heading to Boxboro, Massachusetts for the Gun Owners Action League’s dinner celebrating the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord next month, but if I want to exercise my right to bear arms I would have to make a separate trip to Boston beforehand that would cost me several hundred dollars before I handed over the $100 application fee. And since the state says it’s “currently approving and printing licenses that were submitted for review by police departments between March 15 and March 28”, I can only assume that means March of last year, which means there’s no way my application could be processed in a timely manner.
In a post on X.com, 2A attorney Kostas Moros pointed out that the SJC failed to consider “the extensive history of ‘traveler’s exceptions’ that our amicus brief and other amicus briefs cited”, which “exempted nonresidents from concealed carry prohibitions, at least while they were actively traveling.”
Moros adds that the 19th century statutes the SJC relied on for its decision only applied to concealed carry, noting that “open carry was not so restricted, for anyone, resident or nonresident.”
CRPA President Chuck Michel, who along with Moros filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in these cases, says that the lawsuits “are helpful to our nonresident carry challenge in CRPA v. LASD, at least insofar as they completely agree with us that there must at least be a fair application system in place for nonresidents to apply for a CCW permit.” The problem, though, is that there isn’t a fair application system in place for non-residents, despite the SJC’s ruling to the contrary. The non-resident permitting regime makes it as difficult as possible for visitors to obtain a permit to carry, and now that the state Supreme Court has upheld the system currently in place it’s incumbent on gun owners to challenge the specific mandates that are an impossible burden for most of us to comply with.
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