“This is tremendously devious,” Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League told the Herald.
Lawmakers were open and available to meet and hear from gun owners while writing their proposed law — excepting the Senate President, Wallace said — but that didn’t prevent the Senate from releasing another bad bill.
“The problem with voicing our concerns was we didn’t know what our concerns would be until we saw the bill,” Wallace said in a text exchange. “We voiced our concerns about the House bill but the Senate bill created a whole new set of concerns.”
The bill, according to GOAL’s reading, would effectively ban the use of 3D printers in Massachusetts unless the owner of the printer was also a licensed firearms manufacturer and would require private gunsmiths to serialize some gun components they might wish to make “before they exist.”
Under the senate bill, according to GOAL, those involuntarily committed for a mental health evaluation would see their right to keep firearms suspended — regardless of diagnosis — with the burden to prove their wellness on the gun owner.
The bill also creates a new legal definition for “firearm industry member” and includes under that definition, according to GOAL, “literally anyone in the Second Amendment community including advocates, clubs, trainers, hunters, hunters ed.,” or anyone producing related materials like “t-shirts, posters, banners, or member applications.”
This designation, GOAL says, “would open a massive liability and lawsuit wormhole for virtually anyone” producing Second Amendment products from anyone “who feels harmed.”
“This is an intentional end run around the federal law banning frivolous lawsuits,” GOAL wrote.
The senate bill also includes provisions allowing towns to decide if guns could be carried into municipal owned buildings, prevent people placed under a harassment prevention order from carrying a gun, and make it a crime to fire a gun at an occupied building or dwelling.
Provisions adding popular shooting platforms like the AR-15 to a list of banned guns would, advocates said, turn otherwise law abiding gun owners into felons overnight.
— Matthew Medsger in ‘Tremendously Devious’: Gun Rights Group Blasts Bill Scheduled for Debate in Massachusetts Senate