The new sweeping gun-control package recently expedited into law by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is facing another in a long line of legal challenges.
After the law was passed by the legislature, it quickly became a target for gun-rights advocates. An initiative petition immediately began circulating in an attempt to get a question overturning the law on the state ballot in 2026, and at least two lawsuits, including one by the Massachusetts-based Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL) were filed.
Now, a gun shop owner from Bellingham, Massachusetts, has file a lawsuit challenging the new law. Gino Recchia, owner of Mass Armament, filed the complaint Friday in federal court on the grounds that the law infringes on the Second Amendment rights of him and his business. According to the complaint, the business at Mass Armament “is centered, and has been developed, around firearms and large-capacity magazines prohibited by law.” An estimated 70 percent of the store’s business will be lost under the new limitations, the complaint states.
“I’d say I can’t believe it, but I can,” Recchia said of the governor expediting the law in a video posted on Instagram last week. “But this is Massachusetts, and boy do our politicians not care for our civil rights in the slightest.”
Recchia also suggested that those in opposition to the law should make sure the governor knows how they feel about the situation.
“If you want to express your displeasure to the governor’s office, the number is 617-725-4005. You can also go on to the governor’s Instagram and comment on all of her recent posts about how you feel about all this. We’re going to keep collecting signatures because it’s the right thing to do. The fight’s not over.”
The measure makes a number of changes that will affect gun owners. It raises the age to own a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun to 21 years old, expands definitions for modifications and parts that convert a semi-auto into a full-auto firearm and bans them, prohibits so-called “ghost guns” and also expends the list of places where carrying a firearm is banned to include government buildings, polling places and schools.
The law also adds more firearms to the commonwealth’s banned list of so-called “assault weapons,” makes the state’s “red-flag” law even more unconstitutional enabling more categories of people to report gun owners, requires standardized safety training, including a live fire component, for all firearm license applicants, establishes a worthless commission to study the funding structure for violence prevention services and establishes an equally worthless commission to study the status, feasibility and utility of smart guns and microstamping.
Along with the current lawsuits, the National Rifle Association also plans to challenge the law.
“With Governor Healey’s signature, Massachusetts has enacted one of the most egregious and freedom-restricting laws in the history of the Commonwealth,” the organization said in a released statement. “NRA will be challenging this law to restore the rights guaranteed to Bay Staters by the U.S. Constitution.”
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