New Hampshire and 25 other states challenged a Massachusetts law requiring a permit for a firearm on, in my opinion, shaky ground. There’s a mall in New Hampshire for which the property line extends partially into Massachusetts, and they contend that someone could enter the mall legally holding a gun and exit into a place where it’s illegal to do so.
Which, in a vacuum, is how borders work. Whether the law itself is valid or not ought to be the focus of the discussion.
Steel man
If I could attempt to argue the best case against the law, it would be:
The Second Amendment applies nationally. The right to carry shouldn’t vanish when you cross into Massachusetts. A law-abiding New Hampshire resident shouldn’t become a criminal just by walking 20 feet across a border.
The mall example shows how Massachusetts’ law burdens ordinary life and travel, not just gun possession. It creates a constitutional “trap.”
Unless Massachusetts can show a clear historical analogue for licensing nonresidents, the restriction goes against the 2022 Bruen SCOTUS decision which protected gun owners from overly restrictive state-level gun laws.
A note on states’ rights
In the past, I’ve written about how states’ rights can be used as a bludgeon to curtail our rights when the national government has decided something is protected. However, I don’t think this argument as I crafted it applies to this situation:
- This is a law which doesn’t impact what someone can do based on their race, gender, sex, etc.; it’s a restriction (but not unrealistic prohibition) on a right that one may choose to exercise, which isn’t unusual.
- The slippery slope argument doesn’t apply here; America objectively has an outsized gun violence problem compared to the rest of the world. Requiring that you carry a permit when you have a gun is an earnest state-level step toward a solution.
As such, I think this passes the smell test. Whether the law is valid or not is one discussion, but I think it’s a valid attempt at a state exercising its autonomy to craft an environment best befitting its residents, not an attempt to chisel away at our rights.
In defense of Massachusetts
The argument explained in the article is faulty; when you cross from one state to another, you’re no longer in the state you came from, so that state’s laws don’t apply. Of course this applies even when you cross via a mall. When I buy food at a fast food joint, I can’t cross the street and enter the gym with a “no food” policy and expect clemency simply because it’s an easy mistake to make. Gun owners need to be responsible, given that guns are incredibly lethal weapons. If you wish to carry without a permit, and you can’t keep track of what state you’re in, you’re not being responsible.
The public safety rationale put up by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also holds water with respect to Bruen; Massachusetts has a long history of regulating firearms for public safety. This isn’t a reactionary culture war measure.
See what happens
The SCOTUS has stretched “interpretation” of the Constitution to its limits in recent years, so what ought to happen is very different from what will probably be the outcome. That said, Massachusetts has a strong logical framework for defending its law here, so I hope it pans out–it would be a victory for state-level firearms laws everywhere, not just states which want to have their own restrictions.
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