Massachusetts governor signs bill cracking down on hard-to-trace ‘ghost guns’

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed a sweeping gun bill Thursday that supporters say builds on the state’s existing gun laws, including a crackdown on hard to trace “ghost guns,” while safeguarding the rights of gun owners.

The law is part of an effort by the state to respond to a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that citizens have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.

On ghost guns, the law toughens oversight for those who own privately made, unserialized firearms that are largely untraceable. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice reported recovering 25,785 ghost guns in domestic seizures.

The law expands the state’s extreme risk protective order law — also known as the red flag law — by authorizing health care professionals and others who interact regularly with people in crisis to petition a court to suspend a person’s right to possess or carry a gun to protect themselves and others.

The law also prohibits the possession of firearms by non-law-enforcement people at schools, polling locations and government buildings and imposes strict penalties for the possession of modification devices, such as Glock switches, which supporters of the law say convert an otherwise legal firearm into a fully automatic firearm.

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“Massachusetts is proud of our strong gun laws, but there is always more work to be done to keep our communities safe from violence. This legislation updates our firearms laws in response to the Supreme Court’s misguided Bruen decision,” said Healey, a Democrat.

“It cracks down on ghost guns and 3D printed weapons, which I have long advocated for, enhances our ability to prevent guns from falling into dangerous hands, and invests in our communities to address the root causes of violence,” she said.

The law also requires those applying for a license to carry firearms to demonstrate a basic understanding of safety principles through a standardized exam and live fire training, and provides local licensing authorities with relevant mental health information of pending applicants.

District attorneys would be able to prosecute people who shoot at or near residential homes under the legislation, which would also ensure that dangerous people subject to harassment prevention orders no longer have access to firearms.

Gun rights advocates had criticized the Massachusetts Senate, which approved their version of the bill in February, for failing to hold a separate public hearing given the differences between their bill and the House bill approved last year.

The new law also expands the definition of “assault weapons” to include known assault weapons and other weapons that function like them with respect to certain features. It also prohibits possession, transfer or sale of “assault-style” firearms or large-capacity feeding devices.

The law also bans the issuing of a license to carry a machine gun except for firearms instructors and bona fide collectors, and criminalizes the possession of parts that are intended to make weapons more lethal by adding them to the machine gun statute.

Those parts include automatic parts, bump stocks, rapid-fire trigger activators and trigger modifiers.

The Supreme Court last month struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks,

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have their own bans on bump stocks that aren’t expected to be affected by the ruling.