At this point it's just being blatantly abused.
Exactly. While it sounds good on paper to let the local chief decide who gets to carry a gun, it's useless as far as preventing crime goes, and the standards are so different that you need a chart (helpfully supplied here on NES as a sticky at the top of the forum) to figure out what you'll need to even apply for the license.
I'm not even remotely an anti-cop person, as evidenced by several pissing matches in threads on here
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
, but I also understand that police chiefs are usually political appointees who have a whole different agenda than the regular beat cop.
The compliance crap has nothing to do with what hes' talking about, I think. (Although I would like to see it go too... obviously). I think what he is referring to is the LTC-B ramming by some corrupt chiefs.... when they do this, it severely restricts the handguns you can buy, as it puts all the common double stack handguns out of reach.
-Mike
B ramming and restricted LTC-A's. In almost every other state in the US, even CA, HI, RI, IL, WI where carry is severaly restricted or they have "approved firearms rosters," no police chief can arbitrarily prevent a law abiding citizen from buying a gun to keep in their house. The Mass. laws are bad enough, but when you have to worry at renewal time if you're going to have to sell off all your large-cap pistols if your chief downgrades you to an LTC-B...it's disgusting.
I know tons of gun owners who want nothing more than to keep a pistol in their dresser drawer, or to hunt or hit the range with a rifle once every couple years. In free states all they have to do is pass a NICS check (which still isn't
nearly a perfect system, but leaps and bounds ahead of Mass.), and as long as they don't go out and pick up a felony or domestic violence conviction, for the rest of their life it's perfectly legal to keep that pistol in their drawer, or that rifle in their closet.
In Mass., if you own guns and want to move two towns over to shorten your work commute or lower your local taxes, you have to do research into your local chiefs views on the 2nd amendment, and plan your move accordingly. You have to apply to renew your permit early, because depending on staffing at your local PD or how long it takes them to process your application (even though legally they only have a month or two, which is routinely ignored), your license could lapse, and you'd be in legal trouble for the days, weeks or months you wait for your permit to come in. You also have to worry about if everytime a scumbag gets shot in your municipality your police chief is going to change his licensing policy yet again (see the first post in this thread for an example of that).
What you end up with is a system in Mass. like everywhere else in the world. Devoted criminals still get guns on the black market, and only the law abiding have to jump through more hoops to access their "rights." Someone like myself or many other on this forum who are passionate about guns are willing to jump through all the legal hoops, or are forced to unless they want to lose a very valuable collection. But the average, every day people are left at the mercy of a chief who can carry in all 50 states, even if he's the subject of a restraining order. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's not changing unless people step up and make their voices heard.
This is particularly maddening in Fitchburg, with them shutting off streetlights, laying off cops and shootings happening every other week or so.
/rant
![[thinking]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/010.gif "Thinking [thinking]")
