MA AG Maura Healey Takes Aim at Copycat Assault Rifles (makes up her own gun rules again)

Boston Globe ^ | 7/20/16 | Buell

[pabianice]

It looks like one, it shoots like one, so it is one, Healey says.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey arrives at a meeting of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015, in Boston. Healey said her office will submit recommendations around gambling consumer protection issues soon. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

The state’s top prosecutor on Wednesday announced she has sent a directive to gun makers to no longer sell weapons in Massachusetts that are similar enough to assault rifles to kill like assault rifles, but not similar enough to trigger the statewide ban—or so they thought.

Massachusetts bans high-powered guns like the ones used in recent mass shootings, an effort to extend at the local level a federal ban that expired in 2004. Gun companies, though, are crafty, and they’ve been selling sort-of-but-not-quite assault rifles that also have immense capacity for shooting things, Healey writes in a Boston Globe op-ed published today. She also announced the crackdown at a news conference in her office this morning. She writes:

The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban Congress allowed to expire in 2004. It prohibits the sale of specific weapons like the Colt AR-15 and AK-47 and explicitly bans “copies or duplicates” of those weapons. But gun manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to define what a “copy” or “duplicate” weapon is.

They market “state compliant” copycat versions of their assault weapons to Massachusetts buyers. They sell guns without a flash suppressor or folding or telescoping stock, for example, small tweaks that do nothing to limit the lethalness of the weapon.

[taildragger]

Isn’t it amazing, how they are so Pro 10th Amendment when it is in their favor ( not I that I believe it fits here, but stay with me.. ) but in other cases, not so much...

[Pearls Before Swine]

Healy is the AG in a Republican Governor’s administration.

That’s what you get in MA, even on the GOP side.

There’s more gun owners than gays, where’s our representation?

More than likely, this will lose in the courts. GOAL is on it already.

[DBrow]

““Governor Baker supports the Commonwealth’s assault weapons ban, believes our comprehensive state gun laws work well in protecting the people of Massachusetts, and believes that the attorney general has the authority to enforce the law to crack down on the sale of guns that skirt the assault weapons ban,” said Billy Pitman, the governor’s press secretary.”