American Military News by Matthew Medsger - Boston Herald 3/2/2035
A law in the Bay State effectively prohibiting 18-to-20-year-olds from possessing common firearms is unconstitutional and must be overturned, according to a lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocacy groups.
The lawsuit filed late last week in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts asks the court to throw out An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws, otherwise known as H.B. 4885, over a provision that restricts access to semiautomatic firearms and pistols to just those old enough to secure a License To Carry.
“Massachusetts’s expected justification for so severely restricting the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds is their age. But 18-to-20-year-olds are adults. Yet Massachusetts nevertheless accords them no more autonomy in this area than a 15-year-old child with a note from his parents,” the lawsuit reads, in part. “This justification has no basis in either the text of the Second Amendment or our nation’s history. As a textual matter, the Second Amendment protects the rights of ‘the people’ without respect to age.”
Signed into law last year, according to the lawmakers behind it H.B. 4885 represented the most significant update to the state’s firearms regulations in decades and came in part as a response to calls for new gun rules from law enforcement officials who reported a growing threat from unserialized, made-at-home firearms.
Lawmakers were also reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the high court ruled that any state laws requiring extraordinary processes in order to exercise Second Amendment guaranteed rights were at odds with the U.S. Constitution.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2025/03/the-nra-targets-massachusetts-gun-laws-as-unconstitutional-2/
