Public Hearing on the Governor’s One Gun a Month Bill

Lt. Governor testifies their goal is to reduce the number of illegal guns by shrinking the supply of legal guns!

On Thursday, June 21, 2007 the Joint Committee of the Judiciary held a public hearing on Governor Deval Patrick’s legislation, H3991 “An Act to Reduce Gun Violence”. This bill is most commonly known as the “One Gun a Month Bill”.

The premise of the bill is that the lawful gun owners of Massachusetts are responsible for the illegal gun trade in the Commonwealth. H3991 makes it a crime for a licensed gun owner to purchase more than one firearm (handgun), rifle, shotgun, large capacity weapon, large capacity feeding device or machine gun in a 30 day period. The punishment for the first offense is a fine of not more than $1,000 and/or a sentence of not more than 2 ½ years in a house of correction. It should be clear that there is nothing in this legislation that addresses the acts of criminals dealing in illegal firearms.

The hearing notice was released only two days prior to the hearing and that could explain the rather lackluster attendance. The hearing actually started late due to a Democratic caucus meeting being held in the same room. Once the hearing did begin, it was often interrupted by legislators having to leave to respond to roll call votes in the House and Senate.

Gun Owners’ Action League was in attendance and provided testimony. GOAL’s testimony guided the Committee members in attendance through the entire licensing and gun purchasing process. This process took nearly four pages of speed reading testimony to cover an outline of the process that lawful gun owners must submit to in order to lawfully possess and purchase a firearm.  At the conclusion of this outline, we clearly made the point that after all of this, our Governor still doesn’t trust us and GOAL and its members have a serious problem with that! Our testimony also covered the lack of any evidence that suggests or proves that the lawfully licensed gun owners of Massachusetts are in any way responsible for the illegal activities of criminals.

The most startling testimony of the day came from Lt. Governor Tim Murray. In reading his statement to the Committee he remarked that the intention is to reduce the supply of illegal guns by shrinking the supply of legal guns. We have always known that this was the mission of people who support legislation like H3991. However, this was the first time we have actually heard a public official state the fact that their intention was to shrink the supply of lawfully owned guns!

During his testimony, the Lt. Governor was joined by Kevin Burke (Secretary of Public Safety), Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone and Kurt Schwartz, (Undersecretary of Law Enforcement and Fire Services). When questioned by a member of the committee about what evidence they had to support the implication that lawful gun owners were involved in the illegal gun trade, no one on the panel could provide an answer. This is no surprise since the Governor’s office has already told GOAL that he had no evidence to support the premise of H3991.

While the official public hearing for the legislation was concluded yesterday, the Committee will continue to accept written testimony for some time to come. We urge all of our members to send the Committee a brief letter opposing H3991 “An Act to Reduce Gun Violence.”

Joint Committee of the Judiciary

Room 138
State House
Boston, MA 02133

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