GUN CONTROL legislation moved back on to Beacon Hill’s front burner on Thursday, as House leaders unveiled a revised bill that they hope to send directly to the Senate later this month.
The House officials said the new bill incorporates a number of modifications designed to address concerns about an earlier piece of legislation, which came under fire from gun owners earlier this year and became mired in bureaucratic infighting between the two branches that left the proposal in legislative limbo.
House Speaker Ron Mariano said the new bill will go through a truncated review process in the House, with the House Ways and Means Committee holding a public hearing on the measure Tuesday before sending it on to the full House for a vote later this month. The approach may be a sign of what’s to come on Beacon Hill as some joint House-Senate committees have been un able to find common ground.
It’s unclear how the Senate will respond, but Senate President Karen Spilka indicated on Thursday that she wants to see gun control legislation pass this session. Her office issued a statement saying she believes “Massachusetts should always have the strongest gun safety laws in the country. The Senate will review this new House bill as well as the many other gun safety bills filed in the Senate and the House this session.”
Gun owner groups acknowledged some changes had been made in the latest bill, but not enough to win their support.
Interest in gun control legislation on Beacon Hill was prompted by a 2022 US Supreme Court decision that tossed out a New York law requiring residents to show “proper cause” when seeking the right to carry a concealed weapon. The Supreme Court said the New York law was an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment.
Rep. Michael Day of Stoneham, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, held 11 hearings on gun control around the state before filing broad legislation in late June that was panned by gun owners and failed to get assigned to a committee for action.
Day grumbled and suggested people were dying from gunfire as lawmakers sat on their hands, but he subsequently went back to the drawing board and made a number of revisions to his original legislation, narrowing the requirements for serial numbers on guns, allowing existing owners of newly defined assault weapons to retain them, loosening somewhat the spaces where concealed weapons are prohibited, and eliminating 100 sections of existing law.
“I think the bill is significantly different,” Mariano said.
Even though Massachusetts is regarded as one of the safest states in the country in terms of gun violence, Day and Mariano said the House legislation is desperately needed. They pointed to the shooting that occurred on Wednesday in Holyoke when a pregnant woman riding a bus was hit by stray gunfire. The woman lost her baby.
“The beat goes on,” Mariano said.
“A woman minding her own business and sitting on a public bus midday in Holyoke now has a baby ripped away from her, and she’s left battling for her own life because of stray gunfire,” Day said. “This came within an hour of Holyoke police reporting that they’ve logged 113 instances of gunfire in the past six months alone. Make no mistake: We are in the midst of a national public health crisis due to gun violence, and it is relentlessly continuing to claim lives here in Massachusetts and across the country.”