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Committee forms to protect Mass. gun laws from upcoming ballot question
Advocates established a campaign in response to a ballot question committee calling to repeal the 2024 state gun regulation law.
Gun violence prevention advocates established a campaign earlier this month in response to a ballot question committee calling to repeal the 2024 state gun regulation law.
The Vote Yes for a Safe Massachusetts campaign launched on May 12 and aims to protect the overarching bill that most notably regulates untraceable “ghost guns,” expands data collection, and prohibits guns in polling places and government buildings.
“We’ve really been bringing a lot of folks together and talking about what we need to do to protect this legislation,” said Ruth Zakarin, committee chair and CEO of Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. “I think that we have a pretty broad coalition of folks coming together who really want to see these policies move forward in Massachusetts.”
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The state had the second-lowest death rate by gun violence in 2022, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Coalition co-founder Angus McQuilken said this is due to Massachusetts’ comprehensive laws.
“It is important that we update those laws to reflect the circumstances we’re seeing in our communities and changes in technology,” he said.
“An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws” swiftly passed in both the House and Senate with a large majority of support and was signed by Gov. Maura Healey on July 25, 2024. Zakarin said the coalition was “very involved” in the legislative process for this bill.
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“Our advocacy was really about making sure that we were continuing to strengthen policies, be more comprehensive, respond to new technology and new issues, and be nimble at constantly adapting to keep our communities as safe as possible from gun violence,” she said.
The act would have been enacted by the end of October, but Healey made an emergency preamble on Oct. 2 that made the bill effective immediately during an ongoing campaign from gun rights activists to revoke the law.
Toby Leary, owner of Cape Gun Works in Hyannis, formed the Civil Rights Coalition committee and started collecting signatures to remove the act in August. Leary said about 700 volunteers offered to get signatures and they received them across all 351 cities and towns in the state.
The secretary of state’s office certified 78,707 signatures, more than twice the 37,286 signatures required for a question to appear on the ballot, on Nov. 22. It calls for the entire package to be repealed.
Leary said the total number of signatures the group received was closer to 100,000 gathered within five weeks.
“[The administration] didn’t think we would get even the requisite amount of signatures in the amount of time that we had to get it done,” he said. “As soon as it became apparent, they had to take political action to silence the voice of 100,000 people in the state of Massachusetts.”
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Campaign finance data shows the Civil Rights Coalition had an end-of-year balance of over $90,000. No data was available for Vote Yes for a Safe Massachusetts.
Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners Action League, said his organization was very involved with the coalition’s signature gathering.
The league has also been involved in a number of lawsuits attacking certain parts of the gun act, most recently in February taking action against restricting people ages 18 to 20 from purchasing firearms.
Other suits, such as challenges to training requirements and long gun testing and requirements, have resulted in parts of the act to be suspended.
“We don’t want the bad folks to have guns either,” said Mike Harris, director of public policy with GOAL. “We’re just tired of law-abiding citizens who don’t do anything wrong being blamed for the actions of folks that do.”
Leary said the ballot committee will continue to reach people from different political affiliations and inform people of their Second Amendment rights.
“We believe rights are worth preserving,” he said.
Zakarin said her committee will also take an education approach — through informing people about the importance of the bill and the dangers of a potential repeal.
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“We’ve always been about building relationships and having conversations with folks in communities across the commonwealth, and that will be absolutely the same for this effort,” she said.
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