The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) on Monday announced that it has donated $100,000 to Massachusetts Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL) to support a legal challenge against the new onerous gun control law.

The legislation, which was signed into law by Gov. Maura Healy on July 25, is increasingly coming under siege with at least two lawsuits and an initiative petition being circulated in an attempt to get a statewide vote on repealing the law.

In a press release announcing the donation, NSSF said the law is clearly unconstitutional. Also, as the organization pointed out, the measure was drafted in secret, denying lawmakers the ability to see it beforehand and gun-rights organizations the opportunity to comment on it before the vote.

“Massachusetts is known as a birthplace of the American Revolution, but these lawmakers have turned their backs to rights that belong to the people and instead are instituting an Orwellian state over the citizens of the Commonwealth,” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel, said in the release. “The fight to protect liberty and individual rights begins anew and we are confident that when federal courts apply scrutiny to this law, it will be relegated to the trash bin where it belongs. Massachusetts lawmakers are failing to defend the rights of the people and instead are kowtowing to the special-interest gun control machine that funds their perpetual re-elections.”

The law, called Chapter 135, makes a number of changes that drastically 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.

Jim Wallace, executive director of GOAL, said the law represents the “greatest attack on civil rights in modern U.S. history.”

“For over a year, the supporters of this law have violated and suspended nearly every rule regarding an open legislative process,” Wallace said. “The final drafting of the bill was done in secret and the final language was not provided to the public, or legislators, until the night before the vote. Clearly the supporters understood the unconstitutional language would never survive the light of day and serious scrutiny. We would like to thank NSSF for helping us fight back against this historic attack on the Bill of Rights.”

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13 COMMENTS

  2. Legislative and executive branches (>90% lawyers) pass antigun kook laws, lawyers get rich.

    Is there a quid quo pro?

  4. Here’s hoping they do a better job than in 2016 when then AG, now Governor, Maura Healey wrote all AR-15 makes and models into the state’s assault weapon laws “assault weapon” definition, no legislation, and the RINO, Governor signed, removing all semi-auto rfles, except Ruger, a MA company, from store shelves.

  6. I cannot see how or why the proposed legislation in anyway goes against the SECOND AMENDMEBNT or restricts the ownership of FIREARMS that are actually useful. Apart from possible .22long varmint rifles I can see no legitimate use for SEMU I-AUTO or FULLY AUTO rifles for any legitimate purpose and that u includes ant conception of SELF DEFENCE or HUNTING The only use as far as I can see is rather childish activities down on the Rifle RANGES or for Official MILITARY and SECURITY Operations.
    I am not talking here as another nosey and uninformed BRIT because for years I was a Sergeant SMALLARMS instructor and Musketry Coach in the ROYAL AIR FORCE and after REGULAR RAF Service I served seven years in the UK ARMY INFANTRY RESERVE [the 5th QUEENS and the PWRR] and I’m familiar with EVERY weapon then extant in the RAF/ARMY from the 1960’s into the 1990’s, from .22Long Target t0 40/70 40mm BOFORS including AIRCRAFT Guns and CANNON.
    Nobody needs anything more in civilian hands for any legitimate purpose than a X5 shot Bolt Action Rifle of a suitable Calibre for purpose or anything more than a decent 9mm handgun. A GLOCK or a BROWNING HI-POWER are perfectly adequate and anything else is no more than a variation on a theme and a marketing exercise aimed at a gullible American public The REAL PRO’s – the MILITARY and the Security/Police Services Worldwide know what they need in most circumstances and go for waht’smost effective .

    • Congratulations on your military service as a SUBJECT of your Queen. However, we are free CITIZENS of the United States won by our forefathers in 1776, who replaced your monarchy with a constitutional republic as our elected form of government. In order to create that republic, they also enshrined for us a Bill of Rights enumerating those endowed by our Creator which put limitations on the power of our government. Among these is the Right to keep and bear arms, which is meant to guarantee our individual right to self-defense — and to act as a check on those who would abuse the power of an overarching government against the citizenry, i.e.”the REAL PRO’s.” It reserves to US the RIGHT to determine for ourselves what we “need” for self-defense or other lawful purposes. It limits the authority of unelected bureaucrats, wannabe dictators, Marxist WEF billionaires, or mobs of democrats telling us what we’re “allowed” to have under the rubric of “perfectly adequate” for them to maintain control over us should we become restless.
      “. . . Shall Not Be Infringed” is “perfectly adequate” for us!

    • He’s so proud to defend a country where citizens have basically no right to defend themselves, their homes or their property and in fact have a duty to retreat….oh wait, subjects, not citizens….funny…all those castles and no “castle doctrine”…

  7. After what the NSSF did to pull the rug out from under the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) lawsuit against Colorado, I wouldn’t put much stock in anything they claim to support.

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