From Boston Globe, May 1, 2025

Gun advocates bring wave of challenges
to state laws, capitalizing on Supreme
Court ruling
By Dan Glaun Globe Staff, Updated May 1, 2025, 4:27 a.m.

Gun rights advocates in Massachusetts have mounted a coordinated campaign of
lawsuits they hope will overturn the state’s century-old firearm license system, emboldened by a 2022 US Supreme Court decision that limited how much discretion authorities have in deciding who may carry guns in public.
From Boston to the Berkshires, gun applicants and advocacy groups have brought at least
15 challenges to the state’s license-to-carry law that have made their way to Superior
Courts and that could reach the state’s high court. A coalition of local and national gun
rights groups separately sued in federal court in February to overturn a state law that
bans 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds from possessing handguns or semiautomatic firearms.
And gun advocates have also pledged to appeal a March state Supreme Judicial Court
decision allowing enforcement of license laws against visiting gun owners from
other states to the nation’s highest court, setting up another legal showdown.
For more than a century before the Bruen decision, Massachusetts had some of the most
stringent gun laws in the country. Like similar systems in New York, Hawaii, and several
other states, designated licensing authorities had broad discretion to review applications.
In Massachusetts, that power belonged to police chiefs, who assessed whether applicants
would be a safety risk and asked applicants to demonstrate a “good reason” to carry
before deciding whether to grant a license.
But when the New York Pistol and Rifle Association challenged that state’s licensing law,
the US Supreme Court sided with the gun owners. In a 6-3 decision, the court found
there is a constitutional right to carry a handgun outside the home — and set a high bar
for when authorities can deny a license — invalidating gun laws in New York,
Massachusetts, and other states.
State legislators on Beacon Hill quickly responded by modifying the law, removing the
“good reason” requirement but allowing police chiefs to deny licenses if they find
“reliable, articulable and credible information” that a person could be a public danger
and is unsuitable to carry a gun.
“We are very committed to trying to protect that [law] as much as possible,” said Ruth
Zakarian, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.
“Local police departments know a lot about the people in their towns and municipalities.
It’s that local element and knowing the folks in your community that helps keep people
safe.”
But gun rights advocates saw an opportunity and pounced, filing a series of lawsuits
challenging the state’s interpretation of the new court ruling, as well as the state’s age
restrictions for gun owners, assault weapons ban, and licensing standards.
“After Bruen, we have seen a torrent of lawsuits across the country challenging
longstanding gun violence prevention laws,” said Billy Clark, senior litigation attorney
with the San Francisco-based Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“Massachusetts has been no exception.”
Second Amendment advocates in Massachusetts argue police chiefs still have too much
power to decide the “suitability” of who can and cannot carry a gun. GOAL said it has
sponsored three lawsuits brought by gun owners whose licenses were denied, and
another 12 cases have similarly reached the Superior Court level on their own. In several
of those cases, District Court judges have agreed with gun owners, finding the
“suitability” standard that police chiefs continue to follow is unconstitutional.
The discretion that police chiefs have to deny licenses in Massachusetts is “anathema to
all of the most basic Constitutional norms,” wrote William Smith, a Princeton, Mass.-
based Second Amendment attorney.
“Bruen warned that this right is no longer to be treated as a second-class one,” Smith
wrote in an email. “It shocks the conscience that it continues to be so treated.”
Last May, Holyoke District Court Judge William Hadley ordered the city’s Police
Department to grant a license to a man it had deemed unsuitable because of years-old
drug and domestic violence allegations. In August, a Boston Municipal Court judge cited
Bruen and ordered Police Commissioner Michael Cox to grant a license to an East Boston
man, who said he needed to carry a gun for his job at a security company but was denied
because of a past report of suicidality. That case is now in Suffolk Superior Court, where
Campbell’s office has filed to defend the law.
And in July, a District Court judge ruled that Belchertown Police Chief Kevin Pacunas
was “arbitrary and capricious” when he denied a license to a man who allegedly fired his
gun by accident in the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant in Chicopee. The judge also
found the state’s licensing law unconstitutional.
All three of the District Court judges in those cases were nominated by Republican
governors — two by Charlie Baker and one by Mitt Romney.
Dan Hagan, the Belchertown man’s attorney, said his client was granted a license when
he lived in South Hadley, but then denied one when he moved to Belchertown — an illustration of the law’s vagueness, he said.
“Your constitutional rights are being determined town by town, chief by chief,” Hagan
said. “It’s not based on objective standards.”
In one post-Bruen case to reach the state Supreme Judicial Court, the court ruled in
March that the state’s suitability standard could still stand. That decision came in the
case of a New Hampshire gun owner who was charged with unlawfully possessing
firearms in Massachusetts without proper permits. The court ruled that the state’s gun
laws do indeed apply to out-of-state residents who bring in firearms they can legally
possess back home.
“I still think there is a problem with the discretionary nature of suitability,” said Jason
Guida, a Second Amendment lawyer representing a Boston gun owner currently
challenging the license law in Superior Court. “I understand the desire to preserve the
status quo for public safety, but when you have a situation where you can make different
decisions on the same fact pattern, that’s a problem.”
Clark, of the Giffords Law Center, said the SJC examined Massachusetts gun law under
the Bruen decision while deciding the New Hampshire case and correctly ruled that the
state’s licensing law was constitutional and set objective standards for applicants.
Moreover, the law fits within both Massachusetts and the nation’s history of trying to
keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, he said.
“That’s a very basic and commonsense notion that I think most people would
understand,” Clark said.
Wallace, GOAL’s executive director, disagrees and is supporting the new series of
challenges. He said that while some gun advocates in Massachusetts celebrated after
Bruen, he remained cynical that state officials would afford the Second Amendment its
due respect. It would instead be a long, uphill fight, he predicted.
“Those of us who really knew our history said, ‘Folks, we’re just getting started,’” Wallace
said.