Gun law repeal
This veto referendum asks voters to decide whether to keep or repeal a 2024 state law creating an array of new firearms regulations. In this case, backers of the repeal are pushing for a “no” vote to reject the current law and opponents are pushing for a “yes” vote to keep it in place.
What your vote means
If this passes
The referendum passing means the “no” votes win, and the 2024 gun law would be repealed. The enhanced requirements on training, licensing, and data collection would be rolled back, and the regulations around ghost guns and 3-D printed guns would be nullified because they were not captured under prior definitions of “firearms” in state statute.
If this fails
The referendum failing means the “yes” votes win. That would keep the existing law in place.
The breakdown
In July 2024, Massachusetts enacted one of the strictest gun control laws in the country.
The law made a number of changes to gun regulations that were already on the books. The sweeping legislation included a crackdown on untraceable “ghost guns” and 3-D printed guns; strengthened the state’s “red flag law” limiting who can obtain firearms licenses if considered a danger; expanded the definition of “assault weapons”; criminalized carrying firearms in certain public spaces; updated state registration, licensing, and possession laws; and created new policies for firearm data collection, analysis, and publication.
The repeal is backed by firearms corporation Smith & Wesson and gun rights advocates, including the Civil Rights Coalition and the Gun Owners’ Action League.
Repeal supporters want to undo the 2024 gun law because they say it creates onerous new restrictions on the right to bear arms and reflects an anti-gun posture by lawmakers that infringes on residents’ reasonable desire to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Democratic state legislators, Gov. Maura Healey, and gun violence prevention advocates are defending the law as an effective and commonsense set of changes. A 2026 study published in the JAMA Health Forum looking at states like Massachusetts with red flag laws — the Bay State’s initial red flag law went into effect in 2018 — found that they were associated with reduced suicides.
Effective date
Successful repeal referendums take effect when the results are certified, usually late November or early December.
What this does NOT change
Any restrictions, like the state’s existing assault weapons ban, that existed before the 2024 law took effect.
How did we get here?
Massachusetts’s updated gun law was explicitly passed in response to the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.
The ruling declared New York’s system of gun licensing unconstitutional because it gave licensing authorities discretion to deny concealed-carry handgun licenses if the applicant has not shown a “good reason” to need a license to carry.
It also, more importantly, created a sweeping new test for states that want to limit firearm licensing and possession: whether the restriction is consistent with Founding-era precedents.
This marked a crossroad for part of Massachusetts’s licensing system, and lawmakers treated the ruling as an opportunity to “modernize” the state’s firearm laws with the sweeping 2024 bill they said would pass the new constitutional test.
Almost immediately after the law was enacted, gun rights advocates began gathering signatures to trigger a referendum to repeal it. They met the signature threshold but missed the window to get it onto the 2024 ballot.
At the same time, gun rights advocates have also sued Massachusetts multiple times over the law, arguing that it unreasonably restricts the rights of adults to bear arms. In August, a federal judge in Boston upheld the provision that bars adults under 21 from possessing a handgun or semi-automatic firearm.
That provision is awaiting a decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Mikai P. Thomson. The court is considering whether the age restriction violates the state’s constitution and whether Thomson, who did not apply for a firearms license, has standing to challenge the statute.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
