Senate Majority Leader Cindy Creem, whose district includes Newton, wrote the firearms law that voters will decide whether to repeal on Nov. 3.
Question 9 asks whether to keep or scrap Chapter 135, the 2024 overhaul of Massachusetts gun regulations that Gov. Maura Healey signed into law. A "yes" vote keeps it. A "no" vote repeals it entirely.
The law restricted untraceable "ghost guns," changed licensing and training requirements, expanded access to extreme risk protection orders and required the creation of a public dashboard for state firearm data, according to WCVB. It also expanded the definition of a "machine gun" and allowed school administrators or healthcare providers to petition a court to remove someone's firearms under the state's red flag law.
Creem was the primary author of the Senate's version and the lead negotiator when the two chambers merged competing bills, she told the Boston College student newspaper The Heights. The legislation responded to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen decision, which prompted Massachusetts to revisit parts of its firearm licensing system.
"We got the input of law enforcement officials, community advocates, gun owners, and healthcare workers," Creem told The Heights. "We met with all these people, and came back with what we thought was a great bill."
Creem said violent crime dropped 7 percent in Massachusetts in 2025 and homicides fell 27 percent, though she did not cite a specific data source for those figures.
On the other side of the debate sits a Newton-based organization. The Liberal Gun Club, a left-of-center, pro-Second Amendment nonprofit founded in Newton, supports repeal.
At a forum in Amherst, the club's Massachusetts legislation and lobbying committee chair, Brendan Salisbury, described the law as "putting a hat on a hat," according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He argued the law is unnecessary given that Massachusetts already has the second-lowest rate of gun deaths in the country, after Hawaii. Describing himself as a gay man and a leftist, Salisbury said access to firearms is an important means of self-defense in the current political climate.
Salisbury told The Heights that the law's training requirements create a barrier for residents seeking licenses and called the new registration system invasive.
The repeal effort is led by the Civil Rights Coalition, a pro-Second Amendment group chaired by Toby Leary, president and co-founder of Cape Gun Works. The coalition collected nearly 80,000 signatures to place the referendum on the ballot. At a Newton forum on Oct. 5, Leary argued the law places excessive restrictions on lawful gun owners and said repeal would not eliminate other state gun laws, including the assault weapons ban and background checks, Fig City News reported.
Ruth Zakarin, CEO of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence and chair of the Yes on 9 campaign, urged voters at the same Newton forum to keep the law, pointing to its regulation of ghost guns and its ban on machine-gun conversion devices.
Healey signed an emergency preamble to keep Chapter 135 in effect while the referendum plays out.
Polling suggests the law will survive. A CommonWealth Beacon survey by MassINC Polling Group found upward of 70 percent of voters support keeping the law. Even among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, 55 percent said they would vote yes, despite the state party urging a no vote.
Early voting began Saturday, Oct. 17, and runs through Friday, Oct. 30. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
