Gun Stores Face Financial Ruin over Massachusetts ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

On July 20, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) issued a directive expanding the state’s “assault weapons” ban to cover sales of weapons that had previously been interpreted as outside the ban.

Now the ban on firearms with certain cosmetic features — “flash suppressors and folding or telescoping stocks” — also includes those that lack these. This means firearms that gun manufacturers reworked to achieve state compliance cannot be sold in Massachusetts any longer.

Commonwealth Firearms and Training Centers’ Korey Freeborn reacted to the expansion by lamenting that it could cripple gun stores across the state.

According to The Herald News, Freeborn said:

There are men who have put 30 years into their gun store who potentially will have to shut their doors because the mandate cripples them. It’s really not a good feeling to know if you walk into work and sell a certain weapon you could get a criminal penalty when it was never made explicitly clear what you can and cannot sell.

Mark Bouchard — owner of Shooting Supplies in Westport — said the expanded ban will “take away 20 or 25 percent of his business” immediately.

Troy City Tactical’s Jim Czarn pointed out that Attorney General Healey has yet to issue a list of “common-wealth approved firearms,” which is complicating matters further by making gun manufacturers hesitate to ship firearms to Massachusetts’s gun stores. Czarn’s frustration is magnified by the fact that Healey expanded the check at a time when FBI stats show that no murders are being committed with rifles of any kind in the state of Massachusetts.

Breitbart New previously reported that FBI stats for 2014 — the most recent states available — show that no rifles were used in murders for the whole year. No shotguns were used either. So Massachusetts gun store owners face financial demise because of a ban on the guns that are not being used to commit murders.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.