Last edited Fri Feb 7, 2014, 03:11 AM - Edit history (1)
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_25052378/report-mass-needs-tighten-up-its-gun-laws
Massachusetts law currently allows both a Class A and a Class B license. The Class B license allows an individual to carry a non-large-capacity firearm, and that firearm may not be concealed. The Class A License allows the licensee to carry a concealed firearm for protection.
The report said that since Massachusetts is not a state where gun owners routinely carry their firearms in the open, the state should eliminate the Class B license.
Explained rather more succintly in the Boston Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/02/03/panel-recommends-that-mass-tighten-gun-laws/YNPQ2JTQtAjoqR9rWHbK2M/story.html
The panel members said they also learned that current law gives too much discretion to police chiefs to deny gun licenses to “unsuitable persons,” so they recommended that the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association help develop a tighter definition for that term.
For the most part, police chiefs invoke the “unsuitable persons’’ language to deny licenses for handguns. The panel recommended that police chiefs be allowed to apply that standard to buyers of rifles and shotguns, who are exempt.
Umm, not just no, but HELL NO. This approach was recently deemed unconstitutional in Illinois,
so if this is tried here in Mass it will certainly be challenged in Federal court- the Second Amendment
Foundation and/or the Gun Owners Action League will see to that.
They may very well win. I certainly hope so- 'may issue' laws violate both the Second and
Fourteenth Amendments.
A Class A license requires the approval of police. Eliminating Class B licenses would mean
that
all gun purchases will be at the whim of a politician with a badge.
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