Massachusetts Question 9: Voters decide fate of 2024 gun law

As of 7:55 a.m. ET, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026

Massachusetts voters decide Tuesday whether to keep or repeal the state's 2024 gun law, a referendum that comes less than a week after a deadline for gun owners to register their firearms under that law.

Question 9 asks voters to approve or reject An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws, which the state House passed 124-33 and the Senate passed 35-5 on July 18, 2024, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth's voter information page. Under the official ballot language, written jointly by the attorney general and the secretary, a "yes" vote "would keep in place the law, which increases the regulation of firearms, including ghost guns, machine guns, and assault-style weapons." A "no" vote "would repeal this law."

What the law does

According to the attorney general's summary on the ballot page, the law penalizes possessing, making and transferring untraceable "ghost guns," including 3D-printed guns, and requires all firearms except antiques and relics to carry serial numbers. That includes unfinished frames and receivers that can readily be made into a working gun.

It lets school administrators and licensed health care providers ask a court for an extreme risk protection order, which requires a person found to be a danger to themselves or others to give up firearm licenses and guns. Courts issuing harassment prevention orders may also order guns surrendered.

The law sets 21 as the minimum age to own semiautomatic rifles or shotguns. It adds bump stocks, trigger cranks, Glock switches and auto sears to the state's definition of a machine gun. It also spells out how to decide whether a firearm is an assault-style weapon and when people may keep assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines they already own.

Carrying guns in government buildings, polling places and schools is barred, with some exceptions. The law also creates a public dashboard of anonymized firearm data and requires State Police training and a test for new license applicants, the summary says.

Registration deadline passed last week

The law's text requires the state Department of Criminal Justice Information Services to run a real-time electronic registration system, and says all firearms possessed, made or assembled in Massachusetts must be registered through it.

The deadline to comply with those registration and serialization requirements was Oct. 28, Boston.com reported. Registration runs through the state's MIRCS Unified Gun Portal. The state's firearms data dashboard shows 553,088 active license-to-carry holders, according to Boston.com.

Under the law, sales, loans and other transfers must be reported by all parties within seven days, as must a lost or stolen gun. New residents and people who inherit firearms have 60 days to register them. A first failure to register or report can bring a fine of up to $1,000. Repeat offenses can bring larger fines and jail time, and can lead to a suspended or revoked license.

Repeal would not wipe out every gun rule in Massachusetts. Boston.com noted that laws in place before 2024, including existing restrictions on assault weapons and licensing requirements, would remain in effect.

The case for yes

The committee backing the law, Vote Yes for a Safe Massachusetts, calls it "lifesaving" in its official ballot argument. The group says the law made "vital updates, including banning ghost guns; outlawing devices that turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns; expanding tools to help prevent firearm suicide and mass shootings; creating a firearms data dashboard to better understand gun trafficking."

The group says Massachusetts has a gun death rate 70% lower than the national average and argues that repealing the law "would make everyone in Massachusetts less safe." On its website, the campaign calls the law the state's "strongest gun safety law in a decade" and says "the gun lobby wants to overturn" it.

The case for no

The Civil Rights Coalition, which is leading the repeal effort, says in its ballot argument that the state "already had some of the strictest gun laws in the country" before 2024. It calls the law, known as Chapter 135, "a deeply flawed, 116-page piece of bureaucratic overreach that wastes valuable tax dollars and burdens local communities."

The coalition says the law "mandates an expensive, real-time electronic tracking system that the state hasn't funded and doesn't know how to build." It argues the law pulls local police "away from investigating violent crime" and treats "harmless historical re-enactors and antique hobbyists like criminals." On its website, the group says the law "threatens our most fundamental rights" and urges a no vote "to keep power in the hands of the people."

The commonwealth does not endorse either argument or certify their accuracy, the ballot page says. GROKsiNEWS.com has not independently verified the gun death rate figure.

What repeal would cost

The state's statement of fiscal consequences, written by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, says Massachusetts has made "significant investments" to carry out the law, including training employees, setting up new licensing processes and building IT systems. Repealing it "would require the Commonwealth to expend resources in suspending or re-directing those investments," the statement says.