These are not good times for MA gun owners.

[LoginName]

Damn media is going to kill us...

Pandering on gun permits
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Friday, October 20, 2006

A political contender can’t be tough on crime and be for eliminating those who have served on the front-lines in the fight to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t be carrying them.
Local police chiefs currently have the power to issue gun licenses, including licenses to carry, to residents of their communities. By and large they have done a good job of it. There is a lot to be said for keeping this authority in the hands of officials who can easily check for such disqualifiers as anyone who has, say, violated a restraining order or been the subject of a domestic violence complaint.
Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, who has made much of her expertise in crime-fighting, is proposing to shift that authority to a statewide panel “so that citizens . . . across the state could have the same standards applied to their applications to carry or possess a gun.”
Well, sometimes the heat of a political campaign just makes smart people say stupid things. This is one of those times. And in making the proposal Healey even betrays her Republican roots, which used to prize the work of that government which is closest to the people.
Healey might have made a more useful contribution to the debate by proposing a statewide board to hear appeals from those denied permits at the local level. But to create a new bureaucracy to replace a system that is working well because it might appeal to the Gun Owners Action League is political pandering at its worst.

http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=163176

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT! The Herald IDIOTORIAL STAFF IS AS MYOPIC ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF GUNS AS THOSE CHIEFS WHO WANT TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE PERMITTING PROCESS.

Sometimes when the politics and abuses of a local system get too bad, the power of the local system must be taken away. This is exactly the case with the issuance of gun permits. It is a state permit and it should and always should have been issued at a state level. The mistake of ever giving it to a local chief MUST be corrected and now is as good a time as any.

 

[Bruce for NH State Rep]

Arbitrary Denial of Citizens' Rights = "Good Job"

The folks who wrote that know as much about MA gun laws and their implementation, as I do about...ummm...

...ummm...

Sorry, I'm drawing a blank on this one.

You name a subject, and given 15 seconds for Googling, I'll develop a knowledge on the subject that runs circles around these morons and their alleged knowledge of MA firearms laws.

 

[KMaurer]

But all those denials were the results of wise chiefs exercising careful discretion based on their personal knowledge of the applicants. Why, it's a well known fact that the the city Boston is entirely inhabited by drunks, drug addicts, criminal low-lifes and other ne'er-do-wells. That's the reason the Boston refuses so many applications fo ALP licenses. And Worcester, of course, is jam-packed with mental defectives and fugitives from justice, so Chief Gemme really has no reasonable alternative. Luckily for some of us, many suburbs and rural areas, mostly outside 495, are entirely devoid of such riff-raff, allowing the police here to to issue ALP licenses to every applicant. I'm certain that the police in Boston and other drug-infested criminal enclaves would like nothing better than to be have citizens worthy of being deemed "suitable persons".

Ken

 

[drgrant]

Perhaps someone should alert the birdbrains at the Herald that like 35+
states issue permits without any such "local discretion" and that many
of those states have "gun crime" rates far lower than MA does.

The writer's tone is that of someone who thinks the BS here is the rule rather
than the exception. Maybe we should buy the liberal media types free
plane tickets to florida, whereupon landing and learning about the gun/self defense laws
there, they'll have strokes/heart attacks and remove themselves from fouling
up our gene pool.


-Mike