BOSTON — Two days after Massachusetts voters upheld the 2024 gun reform law, architect Sen. Cindy Creem basked in the preservation of the statute and pitched it as a public safety framework for other states to follow.
“Wow, that was quite a vote the other day, right?” the Newton Democrat said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon. “Thank you to all of you that voted, all of my constituents, all over the state. It was a great vote. Remember, ‘yes’ is a good word.”
Nearly 67% of Massachusetts voters cast a “yes” vote to keep the law that installed new oversight of untraceable ghost guns and 3D-printed guns, bolstered the state’s red flag law that allows courts to take guns away from people who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others, updated the assault weapons ban, expanded data collection and reporting requirements, and more.
Communities around Greater Boston and eastern Mass. overwhelmingly voted to keep the law, unofficial results show, while large swaths of southeastern, central and western Massachusetts voted to repeal it, according to unofficial results.
While still not particularly close in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region, Question 9 saw a larger percentage of “no” votes locally, with 59.3% of voters voting “yes” to uphold the 2024 gun reform law. Ten of the 30 municipalities in the region (Athol, Erving, Hawley, Heath, Monroe, Orange, Petersham, Phillipston, Rowe and Royalston) had more “no” votes than “yes” votes on the ballot initiative.
The two towns that had the highest percentage of “no” votes are two of the smaller towns in western Franklin County. Rowe saw 63.6% of voters vote “no” (138-79), while 71.2% voted “no” at the ballot box in Monroe (42-17).
Senate President Karen Spilka praised “the smart voters of Massachusetts” and offered a compliment for the House, with fellow bill architect Rep. Michael Day joining the Senate gathering.
“We couldn’t do this alone. The House is great to work with,” Spilka said.
The Ashland Democrat emphasized that the gun laws are “not about choosing between public safety and individual rights.”
“They are about recognizing that rights and responsibilities must go hand in hand,” Spilka said. “They must go together.”
Since the law’s passage, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said her county has managed to prosecute 17 people who were making and using ghost guns, as well as nine people who fired into homes while residents were inside.
“My hope is that the work we’ve done here will serve as a model for other states looking to strengthen their own gun safety laws and prevent senseless tragedies,” said Creem. “I’m thrilled that legislators in other states can look at these results on Tuesday’s vote and see there is overwhelming public support for commonsense gun safety laws.”
Toby Leary, chair of the Civil Rights Coalition that pushed for repeal, said he was “not at all surprised” by the results but “disappointed that more Mass. residents aren’t concerned about assaults on their constitutional rights.”
“And frankly, maybe … we didn’t do a good job of spreading that message,” Leary told State House News Service. “Like a lot of people don’t look at this as a constitutional issue — they look at it as just a, you know, a form of regulation.”
While the ballot campaign is over, Leary said there’s a handful of active legal challenges underway in Massachusetts and that others are being considered, including for data privacy issues related to a firearm registration portal online. He said gun rights advocates are also keeping tabs on oral arguments next month in the Supreme Court, which will hear consolidated challenges on the constitutionality of bans on AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles.
“I think they’ve already tipped their hand that you cannot ban firearms that are in common and ordinary use,” Leary said of the Supreme Court. “So that’s a huge problem for Massachusetts with their handgun roster and the so-called assault weapon ban.”
Spilka, asked if she’s concerned how the Supreme Court case could impact state law, said, “We’ll have to see what happens, but there’s lots of time in between, and we’ll have to see what the oral arguments are.”
Ruth Zakarin, who chaired the Yes on 9 for a Safe Massachusetts campaign, told State House News Service that she is not “hugely concerned” by the complaints working their way through state courts.
“So far, everything has been decided that this law is sound and it is constitutional,” Zakarin said. “We obviously pay attention to the litigation, but I don’t have a specific worry.”
Gov. Maura Healey signed an emergency preamble in October 2024 to make the gun reform law take effect immediately, thwarting gun activists’ attempt to suspend it while the repeal effort played out.
Day said Massachusetts must continue to implement the gun reform law “thoughtfully.”
“We have to make sure law enforcement has the tools and, more importantly, the training that it requests and needs,” the Stoneham Democrat said. “We have to support community-based violence prevention. We have to continue to evaluate what works and what we can do better across the spectrum.”
Johnny Depin contributed reporting.