An early test cases of the law was the successful prosecution of a young man who had inadvertently allowed his gun license to expire. To raise money to buy his high school class ring, he was driving to a pawn shop to sell his gun. Stopping the man for a traffic violation, a policeman noticed the gun. The teenager spent the mandatory year in prison.
The most famous Bartley-Fox case, however, involved a man who started carrying a gun after a co-worker assaulted him, and repeatedly threatened to kill him. The co-worker did attack later, and the victim successfully defended himself. The crime victim was then sentenced to a mandatory one year in prison for carrying a gun without a permit. The Massachusetts high court summarized:
The threat of physical harm was founded on an earlier assault by Michel with a knife and became a real and direct matter once again when Michel attacked the defendant with a knife at the MBTA [subway] station. . . . [D]efendant is a hardworking, family man, without a criminal record, who was respected by his fellow employees (Michel excepted).
Michel, on the other hand, appears to have lacked the same redeeming qualities. He was a convicted felon with serious charges pending against him. . . . It is possible that defendant is alive today only because he carried the gun that day for protection. Before the days of a one-year mandatory sentence, the special circumstances involving the accused could be reflected reasonably in the sentencing or dispositional aspects of the proceeding. That option is no longer available in the judicial branch of government in a case of this sort.
Commonwealth v. Lindsey, (Mass. Supreme Judicial Court (March 5, 1986).
The Lindseycase generated such an outcry that defendant Lindsey was eventually pardoned by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, even though Dukakis was a staunch gun prohibition advocate.
