A week-long attempt to get people to sign a petition piled up on Beacon Hill this week. The Civil Rights Coalition got more than 95,000 signatures against a broad gun law that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law with an emergency proclamation.
Toby Leary of the Civil Rights Coalition said, “We ask our governor and legislature, by what authority do you act on our unalienable rights?”
The people of the Commonwealth worked together to shut this down for the second time, according to Jim Wallace of the Gun Owners Action League.
Gun rights supporters say that the executive order goes too far and have promised to take the case to court.
Wallace said, “We’ve been working with national partners for almost a year to break things up by subject and then bring it to federal court.”
But Healey has a different point of view. It’s important to stress again how important the emergency introduction is and how the policies in the law work.
Healey said, “As governor, it is my job to protect public safety by making sure we pass as soon as possible a law that bans ghost guns, which are a threat to people in Massachusetts and across the country right now.” It’s that easy.
Voters in 2026 could make a difference in this fight.
“It will be on the ballot no matter what,” Leary said. “We’ll have two years to talk about the basic civics that goes with that.”
Healey said, “It was a democratic process; the legislature voted on this policy.”
