Earlier this week, the Attorney General’s office sought an extension on responding to the plaintiff’s complaint after NRA-ILA proudly announced its financial and legal support of a lawsuit challenging Massachusetts’s unconstitutional ban on many of the most popular semi-automatic rifles sold and possessed.
The lawsuit was formally filed last month in response to Massachusetts Attorney General Healey’s issued “enforcement notice” that greatly expands the Commonwealth’s definition of “assault weapon.” AG Healey alleges that the ban’s definition of “copy” or “duplicate” “assault weapons” has been misinterpreted for the last 18 years and she is simply the first law enforcement official to discover this incorrect interpretation. Beyond AG Healey’s obviously incorrect interpretation of the law, her enforcement notice fails to provide an intelligible definition of what will be considered an “assault weapon” by her office. No explanation is given for how the definition of an “assault weapon” can change as it applies to individual possession, ownership, and transfer versus sales of new firearms by licensed dealers.
