by Dr. Anne Mulhern
Time: 6 PM
Date: Thursday, 13 February 2025
Duration: 2+ hours
Location: Clubhouse at Lowell Sportsmen’s Club at 50 Swain Road, North Chelmsford
Presenter: Jon Green (Director of Education and Training at GOAL: http://www.goal.org/about-goal)
Subject: What Chapter 135 of the Massachusetts Acts of 2024 (https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2024/Chapter135) means for you whether you are a gun owner, retailer, seeking to purchase, or working in law enforcement.
All are invited to this free event, but registration is required (https://lowellsc.org/events/event/ma-gun-laws-seminar-with-goals-jon-green-2/). To register, please send an email to events@lowellsc.org.
Why is this special seminar being held?
Last July the Massachusetts legislature passed the aforesaid Chapter 135: An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws;
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2024/Chapter135
This document is over 34,000 words long, and makes many alterations to existing Massachusetts law. It seems unlikely that anyone involved actually understands the whole thing. To somewhat address the incomprehensibility of the original document, a supplementary document was generated: Summary of Ch. 135 of the Acts of 2024 (https://www.mass.gov/doc/summary-of-ch-135-of-the-acts-of-2024). This document is only a little over 500 words long and I was able to read through it. But, of course, the reader can have no idea whether the summary contains the information in the original document that matters to them. That would be where the GOAL seminar comes in.
This legislation has been mentioned by InsideLowell before in the article “Kennedy Gun Safety Bill Passes Senate” (https://insidelowell.com/17673-2/). That article does not mean that Senator Kennedy is responsible for the whole of Chapter 135 but just for that small portion of it regarding firing at buildings, which can be found here: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/mass-general-laws-c269-ss-12g.
You can see how the Massachusetts House, including your local legislators, voted on this legislation here: https://malegislature.gov/Journal/House/193/RollCalls/hj07182024_RollCalls.pdf . The short of it, though, is that the vote went very much along party lines, and your local legislators voted in concert with their Democrat associates, i.e., for the bill.
Chapter 135 was approved and signed into law by Governor Healey in July 2025. The following is the statement she made at the time (https://www.mass.gov/news/governor-healey-signs-gun-safety-legislation-cracking-down-on-ghost-guns-strengthening-violence-prevention):
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. It cracks down on ghost guns and 3-D 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. This law will save lives, and I’m grateful to the Legislature and gun safety advocates for their hard work to see this through.
Information on the Bruen decision that Governor Healey referred to can be found here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf .
