Dirty SOBs...

Just got an e-mail from GOAL (Gun Owner's Action League, one of the pro-2A rights groups here in MA). They're highlighting an erroneous bit of information contained in a letter from the EOPS (Executive Office of Public Safety) to MA FFLs:

Gun Owners' Action League has received copies of a notice sent to Massachusetts licensed firearm retailers from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security - Firearms Record Bureau.

The notice from the agency is unsigned and not dated and contains supposed information regarding the sale of "Assault Weapons" and "Large Capacity Feeding Devices."

This letter states the following incorrectly;
A weapon or large capacity feeding device defined in G.L. c. 140 s121, or a weapon having the characteristics outlined in 18 U.S.C. s921 (a) (3), may not be possessed, sold or transferred in the Commonwealth if the weapon was not lawfully possessed under a Massachusetts firearms license on September 13, 1994.

The letter from the EOPS can be found here.

This is insidious in that it is technically correct - in order for a resident of MA to have possessed a magazine in 1994, they would have needed a MA LTC - but very misleading. There is no need for a "pre-ban" magazine to have been owned by a MA resident prior to 1994; it need only have been manufactured prior to that date. See, the MA AWB was poorly and hastily written, and simply extends the Federal ban in perpetuity. They weren't clever enough to write into the ban extension anything like the magazine had to have been in state or in the possession of a MA LTC holder or anything like that.

They're just hoping that by clouding the issue they can get MA FFLs to stop selling pre-ban high capacity magazines. Now, given that there are no laws whatsoever against shipping pieces of metal into the state, it's a fairly trivial matter to receive a pre-ban magazine from an out-of-state source. As long as you have the appropriate permit to own a high capacity magazine (Class A for handgun, Class B for rifle) and the magazine was manufactured before September 1994, it is 100% legal for you to receive the magazine from any legal source. There is (currently) no need to buy magazines from an FFL, although it wouldn't surprise me to hear that they're working to require that...

IOW, the MA EOPS is faking it in an attempt to stop law-abiding folks from engaging in lawful commerce. Like the rest of the gun control movement, they have to resort to lies, half-truths, and obfuscations to get their point across. Whereas all we have to do is use facts and logic. As Unc is fond of saying: Gun control - it's what you do instead of something. Rather than going after the criminals that commit the crimes, the MA "justice" system would rather bully MA businesses with misleading statements. Rather than address the significant criminal problem, they take potshots at law-abiding gun owners.

Then again, law-abiding gun owners are a much smaller minority than criminals in MA...

That is all.