Mass. Task Force lays out 44 ways the Legislature should infringe on your gun rights

After the shooting at Sandy Hook, a state committee in Massachusetts was charged with devising ways to end gun violence.

We are a nation who loves to think everything is coded so you can go ahead and read that as “devising ways to pass acceptable gun control by exploiting the tragedy of dead children.”

I’ll give Massachusetts politicians this though, they at least went through the process of giving it some thought, unlike Gov. Cuomo of New York who violated his states own prohibitions in order to jam the SAFE Act down the throats of New Yorkers in the dead of night.

So what did this “task force” come up with? While not completely erasing what’s left of the 2nd Amendment in Massachusetts, as a whole the recommendations are just gun control masquerading as something “new”.

The major points:

— The Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association should work with the Massachusetts Gun Control Advisory Board to develop a set of factors determining what constitutes a suitable person for gun ownership and licensure.

Maybe I’m just arguing semantics, but I’m pretty sure being an AMERICAN is enough to constitute being suitable. Now, if you want to develop a set of factors determining what voids the right of a person from gun ownership go right ahead. But the way it is worded promotes the false belief that Americans AREN’T born with the inherited right to keep and bear arms. Words matter and I don’t think the way it was written in the report was an oversight.

In fact, the way it is written just STRENGTHENS Massachusetts standing as a “May Issue” state when nearly every other state in the union is a “Shall Issue” state.

A state should be required to have cause to deny a person their rights (a criminal, a madman etc.) but Mass. can just summarily deny the right and the task force recommends that they all get on the same page to deny that right unilaterally.

— People applying for a firearms identification card should undergo the same suitability standards as those seeking a gun license, and the state should eliminate the Class B license.

I ask why you need a Firearms Identification Card in the first place? It’s just another harassing and money making scam by the state in order to punish gun owners. As for the Class B license, it is the only way a person in Massachusetts can legally open carry a firearm. Eliminating that will eliminate open carry in Mass. completely.

— The state should consider a public service campaign encouraging family members to alert authorities when someone “may hurt themselves or others.”

That sounds eerily similar to New York’s “Rat your neighbor out” bounty program and seems like it would easily denigrate from good intentions to false calls and arrests based on any number of petty differences.

— Schools should develop a mental health plan and more funding should be available for schools to identify and treat students with mental illness. — There should be increased funding for mental health and substance abuse in urban areas, as well as neighborhood outreach workers, job programs, and family intervention.

I’m actually ok with both of these suggestions. Because they actually address the problem. A gun has never jumped up one day and said “I’m going on a rampage to kill a lot of people”, but people do. And let’s not kid ourselves, if the killer of Sandy Hook didn’t have a gun, a bag of tools and knives would have made the death count just as high, if not HIGHER.

Yet, with all the money and recommendations about improving schools, not one mention of hiring an armed guard, or training teachers to carry a firearm. Once again, the point seems to be more control, not more safety.

Then you have things like mandatory training and tax breaks for buying a gun safe.

I like the idea of training and support it. I do NOT support making it mandatory because it opens the door for the state to make it arduous, costly and so difficult that it would reveal itself as nothing more than another attempt to dissuade people from exercising their right. Every time you put the state in charge of dictating how you can/must exercise your rights you give them another way to infringe it. In this case, an end around to the 2nd Amendment if you will.

Also, if you are giving tax breaks for gun safes, why not give tax breaks for buying guns in the first place? You know, to offset all the poll taxes and all the other Jim Crow style taxes placed on law abiding gun owners in the first place.

The report has some more minor suggestions and a lot of congratulatory back patting, if you want to read the report in it’s entirety you can follow this link:

Strategies for Reducing Gun Violence in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

All in all I find this to be another droll rehash of Gun Control parading itself out to be something it is not…namely a way to improve safety and decrease tragedy.

The vast majority of these 44 recommendations do neither.

Related articles