Parker Mumford, “Question 9 Is a Referendum on a Multifaceted 2024 Gun Law,” Provincetown Independent, October 14, 2026.
“You can’t really address a problem you’re not collecting data on,” Jon Cohn, the policy director for Progressive Massachusetts, told the Independent. “There’s nothing in the law that restricts someone’s legal gun ownership; it just makes guns easier to track.”
Cohn said the law’s broader ban on “assault-style firearms” is important to keep Massachusetts laws “aligned with the type of weapons that exist in 2026.”
Cohn said that the bill’s expansion of red flag laws was important to protect against suicide, which “is often forgotten about as a large share of gun violence.”
In 2024, about two-thirds of gun-related deaths in Massachusetts were suicides, according to the CDC.
“It was a very well thought out, robust piece of legislation responding to real needs,” Cohn said.
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Cohn, meanwhile, said that repealing the law would set a bad precedent for gun control elsewhere in the country.
“Massachusetts, as one of the more liberal states, should be constantly leading on policy,” he said. “If we’re going backward on policy, it sets a really bad precedent for what can happen in other states.”
