WORCESTER – Attorney General Maura T. Healey’s office recently wrote in court documents that its controversial 2016 assault weapons enforcement notice does not ban a collection of weapons at issue in a federal lawsuit filed by gun shops.

In a July 18 filing in U.S. District Court in Worcester, the office said it has informed plaintiffs in the case – including Pullman Arms of Worcester – that seven types of semi-automatic rifles they sued over are OK to sell in Massachusetts.

Two types of rifles were explicitly sanctioned before the lawsuit was filed, the AG said, and five others were confirmed kosher in answers the AG recently provided to the gun shops during the pre-trial discovery process.

“Thus, the plaintiffs have clarity with respect to every weapon identified in their amended complaint,” Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Kaplan wrote.

The disclosure was made in a motion the AG filed seeking to quash depositions of four area police departments – including Worcester – probing their understanding of the AG’s notice.

It will not end the lawsuit filed by the shops, two of which have said they were forced to stop retail sales because of fears that some of the guns they were selling could get them prosecuted.

Ms. Healey, shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida that killed 49 people, announced a crackdown on “copycat” assault weapons she said were being sold in defiance of Massachusetts law.

She did not specify all the models of firearms she was interpreting to be illegal, but issued an enforcement notice that described certain tests that guns needed to pass.

Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and his administration wrote letters of concern over perceived ambiguity in the notice, while 58 lawmakers, including 18 Democrats, sent Ms. Healey a letter objecting to her action “in the strongest possible terms.”

The plaintiffs in the Worcester case have noted that Mr. Baker’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security had been approving sales of the weapons that were now possibly being deemed illegal. They intend to depose Mr. Baker’s office, EOPS and state police, according to court filings.

Asked for reaction to Ms. Healey’s filing, Lawrence Keane, general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said it is “just the latest in a long string of delaying tactic in this case.”

Mr. Keane objected to an argument the AG made in the July 18 filing that it was always clear to persons of “ordinary intelligence” that the guns at issue here were legal to sell.

“Why didn’t’ she tell that to the plaintiffs when they called and asked?” he said. “Why only now after years of litigation?”

A review of some of the records filed with the court does not appear to support the notion that the status of the guns in question was always clear.

In his March 2018 ruling denying Ms. Healey’s motion to dismiss the case, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Hillman wrote that the AG’s “(enforcement) notice and subsequent failure to clarify arguably has resulted in a lack of fair notice of which conduct will be subject to criminal sanction.”

Additionally, AG lawyer Gary Klein wrote in a November 2016 email to one of the plaintiffs that the AG “has not taken a position on the sale of the Tavor as of this time.”

The IWI Tavor is one the seven groups of weapons the AG’s July 18 motion argues was always clearly legal under its enforcement notice.

In a court filing Friday, David R. Kerrigan, attorney for the gun shops, noted that, using the logic employed by the AG on July 18, the AG's own employees "must not be of ordinary intelligence.

“This cannot be,” he added. “The fact is that the employees were unable to tell because they, and the stores, were uncertain on whether the firearms met the tests.”

The T&G asked the AG’s office for comment on how Judge Hillman’s ruling and Mr. Klein’s email squared with its July 18 argument. The office, as it often does during ongoing litigation, declined comment on the case.

At the motion to dismiss a portion of the case, judges are generally bound to accept the plaintiff’s allegations as true and construe the facts in the light most favorable to them.

The other weapons the AG has deemed legal to sell are the the Kel-Tec RFB, the FN PS90, the Kel-Tec Sub 2000 and the Berretta CX4 Storm.

The AG noted that two other weapons the plaintiffs sued over – the Smith & Wesson M&P 15-22 and other .22 caliber rimfire AR-15 style rifles, and the Springfield Armory M1A – were already explicitly deemed legal by the AG in a follow-up notice released before the lawsuit was filed.

The gun shops argued that the latter weapons fail the AG’s own test enumerated in the enforcement notice, underscoring the vagueness they allege is inherent in her announcement.

Mr. Keane said Ms. Healey’s current position that all the guns in question were always clearly legal is “nonsense.” He said he believes the enforcement notice was intentionally vague to chill the selling of certain firearms.

Mr. Keane said the AG’s latest filing does not limit the need to continue to press the case. In addition to asserting deprivation of property because of guns they felt they could no longer sell, gun shops are still concerned that law enforcement agencies outside the AG could interpret her enforcement notice to ban the guns at issue.

“(The AG) admitted in discovery in this case that she is not the final arbiter of which guns are or are not legal to sell, saying other law enforcement agencies and district attorneys in the state are not bound by her ever-changing pronouncements,” Mr. Keane wrote in an email.

The police departments the gun shops are seeking to depose were chosen because they are the departments in the towns where the gun shops do business.

The shops argue the depositions are needed so they can probe the police departments’ understanding of the AG’s enforcement notice.

The notice does not apply to individual gun owners who transfer banned weapons bought before the July 20, 2016 notice date.

Contact Brad Petrishen at brad.petrishen@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BPetrishenTG.