Massachusetts Gun Violence Up Despite Tougher Laws on Firearms
Some blame out-of-state guns brought from New Hampshire and Maine.
Despite it's relatively strong gun laws, Massachusetts has seen a rise in the number of firearm-related injuries over the past decade, according to the Boston Globe. In particular, murders involving guns have gone up (188 percent), but so have aggravated assaults (26.7 percent), armed robberies (20.7 percent) using guns. The leap in these types of crime has occurred even as Massachusetts tightened its gun laws in 1998, including a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, tougher licensing requirements and stricter rules on how guns are stored. Some are attributing the rise to the high number of guns brought in from out of state, especially from New Hampshire and Maine, which don't require a permit to buy a gun. "Those states alone accounted…
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Sherman Homan
8:14 pm on Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Any gun brought in from out of state would be illegal by definition. Inter-state gun sales have been regulated for half a century. An out of state sale has to go through a licensed Massachusetts gun dealer. If I buy a gun from someone in New York I have to complete the sale by having that gun shipped to licensed Mass dealer. Once the background check is run and the transfer fee paid I can pick it… more ›