I opened up the OP's link in Brave browser and it shows:
Sure, Massachusetts has among the toughest gun laws in the nation, but it’s not an island.
And so while Washington remains paralyzed around any issues related to guns, it’s critical that states — including Massachusetts — do what they can to deal with issues of trafficking, reporting, and tracing the guns that continue to wreak havoc on the streets of our cities.
“One homicide is too many, one shooting’s too many,” Boston Police Commissioner William G. Gross told the
Legislature’s Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
Gross, who said his department has collected more than 4,000 guns in the past year, more than 2,800 of them considered “crime guns,” is looking for support for a bill that would impose fees, fines, and provide for possible impoundment of vehicles found to be
transporting illegal firearms. He’s also looking for increased information-sharing among police departments.
Re
“Even in Massachusetts, there’s room to do more on gun violence” (Editorial, Sept. 1): Boston Police Commissioner William Gross knows all too well that there is more that can be done in Massachusetts to address the epidemic of gun violence. His proposal to allow for fines, fees, and the potential to impound a vehicle involved in gun trafficking makes good sense and could reduce the number of firearms in circulation on our city streets.
One addition to the omnibus bill your editorial endorses would be a ban on the sale and use of any rifle, handgun, or shotgun that contains a semiautomatic mechanism (allowing the firearm to discharge spent rounds automatically and load new, live rounds automatically with each pull of the trigger). Such a ban also avoids Second Amendment challenges, since it doesn’t affect guns per se, but rather the inclusion of a mechanism that allows them to be capable of inflicting human casualties on a scale that tragically has become all too common.
The Falmouth Gun Safety Coalition has been advocating for the passage of this proposal for some time, and we are persuaded that such a ban would be an important step in the fight against gun violence.
Jane Scarborough
Jack McDevitt
Boston
Scarborough is a retired associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, and McDevitt is a professor of the practice in Northeastern’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
