By Steve Pomper
“The Lexington Minuteman,” Lexington, Massachusetts
When it comes to chasing cops out of the profession, despite putting their communities at grave risk, anti-cop/anti-self-defense/anti-gun legislators in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts take a backseat to no one. And, originally from Mass. but currently residing in Washington State, I know what it’s like to live in an anti-cop/anti-gun/anti-self-defense state.
In a Facebook post my wife recently told me about, a retired cop and also a retired U.S. Army Reserve officer, long-time firearms instructor, and a current director for Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), explained just how dire things are for Massachusetts gun owners, including cops, ironically, in the Birthplace of the American Revolution. Sadly, the Shot Heard’ Round the World barely reverberates in Massachusetts, the home of several of America’s Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock.
Though we didn’t know each other, I contacted the author of the FB post and learned he and I were both born and raised in the same general area in Massachusetts, and we have friends and acquaintances in common. He even knew my father-in-law who was a cop back there for 36 years.
The author titled his post “The Looming Law Enforcement Crisis” and asked, “How Many Cops Will Quit?”
He’s referring to House Docket, HD-4420, the anti-gun, anti-self-defense, anti-law enforcement, anti-Second Amendment, 2940-line, 140-page disgraceful, anti-American bill sponsored by Mass. Rep. Michael S. Day (D-31st Middlesex). His co-sponsors are listed below.
Also, ironically, Day’s official biography touts, “He is one of the leading advocates of civil rights and civil liberties issues in the Boston Bar Association…,” as he fights to unravel one of Americans’ most important civil liberties, the Second Amendment, without which our God-given right to life is not possible.
The radicals have slapped a positive and innocuous (cynical and ludicrous) title on HD-4420 “An Act modernizing firearm laws.” Oh… modernizing. Nothing to see here; let’s move along, folks. To be fair, I suppose they couldn’t accurately call it An Act Infringing on the Second Amendment.
In a recent video the director of GOAL, Jim Wallace, by all accounts a reasonable man and not a bomb-thrower, blasted the legislators who’ve launched what he calls, “The Lawful Citizens Imprisonment Act.” GOAL warns:
HD.4420 An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws’ represents an all-out assault on the entire Second Amendment community.
Virtually every one of any age, regardless of specific interests in firearms, will likely become felons should this bill become law! No one who owns any type of gun in Massachusetts is spared from this new proposed legislation!
• Essentially bans hunting on private property Bans anyone under 15 from training or shooting sports
• Mandatory serialization and registration of all feeding devices not just magazines
• Massive training requirements that include things like active shooter training
• Any changes or repairs to a gun must be approved by the state A semi-auto turkey gun with a pistol grip will be an Assault Weapon No one under 21 can purchase any semi-auto gun of any kind or caliber
• The definition of ‘Firearm’ would mean any gun, frame, receiver or barrel
• In order to carry or transport any gun, property owners must post that they consent to allow guns on their property AND MUCH MORE!!
“Contact the House Speaker, Senate President’s, Local State Representative and Senator offices immediately!
Tell them to kill this historic anti-civil rights bill!!
House Speaker Ron Mariano: 617-722-2500 Senate President Karen Spilka: 617-722-1500
For more information on this historic attack on our civil rights: goal.org/gunban.”
So, here we have gun-stupid politicians, many who oppose enforcing existing firearms laws, who know little about guns, pretend to have the “expertise” to “modernize” gun laws. How dare they interfere with other people’s ability to protect their God-given right to life?
I’ll try to encapsulate the author’s fitting description of this atrocious legislation. He writes, “One of the provisions of the atrocity of the proposal by Rep. Michael Day limits the carrying of firearms of any type in certain ‘sensitive’ places, and then goes a step further, including basically all public and private properties – unless permission is given or posted conspicuously. The exemption is for police and security guards on official business – which translates into ‘on duty.’”
Every cop reading that quote likely heard that anti-cop gong that Day and his neo-Marxist cabal struck with this legislation. Does Rep. Day believe that when cops go off duty, the criminals they’ve arrested hang up their bad-guy tools and also call it a day? Every cop has run into people they’ve dealt with on the job. Hey, Rep. Day, some criminals don’t like the cops who arrested them—they don’t like their families either. I know, weird, right?
Massachusetts State Police vehicle
The retired officer wrote, “I’ve run into more than a few of them when I was out of uniform. While the encounters were peaceable, I always wonder, had they known for sure that I wasn’t carrying, would the result be the same?”
The author is also concerned generally for the law enforcement profession. Discussing this legislation with at least a dozen other veteran law enforcers, he said he can see even more cops bolting for the exit. Limitations on their ability to exercise their God-given self-defense rights while off-duty are untenable for cops and, for that matter, for ordinary law-abiding armed Americans as well. Adding to the reasons cops are leaving the profession, pressure from cops’ worried spouses may also have cops picking up applications at the firehouse down the street.
The legislation also assaults (pun intended) what the gun-stupid call “assault rifles.” He wrote, “ALL Post-1994 AR-type rifles, and a host of others, as well as the magazines, or ‘feeding devices,’ will be outlawed.” The FB post’s author explains that many (most) agencies don’t have enough rifles to issue to officers, particularly in rural locations. This means some cops provide their own weapons. But that won’t be allowed if this legislation passes, placing officers and the public in further danger.
“Restricting law-abiding citizens,” the author writes, “is insulting and demeaning at the very least, but further restricting law enforcement in the wake of rising violence by armed career criminals, considering the already ongoing recruiting and retention crisis in the police ranks is an exercise in absurdity!”
Police Officer Mansfield, Massachusetts
He also laments, “For the first time since the inception of the nation [which ironically began in Massachusetts], our government is intentionally making the entire populace defenseless.” He fears the Commonwealth’s “pro-crime policies…” will cause “even more dangerous criminals will flock to the Bay State.”
The author references this anti-cop surge as arriving a few years ago with the “Summer of Peace” (former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s Summer of Love) made possible by the George “Soros-backed criminal gangs [Antifa/BLM militias] [that] ravaged towns across the country.” The radical left’s lunatic anti-cop, pro-criminal policies caused crime to spike, which he observed caused gun sales to explode. What do you expect when you defund the police and refuse to enforce the law?
Antifa thugs in Phoenix
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Bruen Ruling, striking down 2A-infringing laws, radical leftist, anti-self-defense politicians are panicked, looking for anything—even enacting blatantly unconstitutional laws—to infringe on law-abiding people’s gun/self-defense rights.
We have to remember that we’re not dealing with reasonable people who simply don’t understand what they’re doing. We’re dealing with cultural revolutionaries who know exactly what they want, and it’s something different than what we want. They want something different from what those farmers and tradesmen armed with muskets in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts were willing to sacrifice their lives for 248 years ago: American liberty.
Shall Not Be Infringed
The author finishes with a flourish by paraphrasing President Ronald Reagan’s the “nine most terrifying words in the English language are, we’re from the government, and we’re here to help….”
A government that disarms its people effectively enslaves them.
Rep. Day, please explain how Americans have a God-given right to life if government takes away the right to defend that life? And can you have a right to defend your life without a right to keep and bear the most effective and practical means of self-defense: a firearm?
We’ll be waiting for your answer.