Question 9 puts the state’s 2024 gun law overhaul before voters
This series examines the nine statewide ballot questions on the November 3, 2026, Massachusetts ballot and concludes with Question 9, a veto referendum asking voters whether to uphold or repeal a sweeping update to the state’s firearm laws that have been in effect since October 2024.
What Question 9 would do
Question 9 works differently from the eight ballot questions before it in this series. Rather than asking voters to approve a new law, it is a veto referendum on House Bill 4885, also known as Chapter 135 of the Acts of 2024, An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws, which the Legislature passed and Governor Maura Healey signed in 2024. Because Healey issued an emergency preamble that took the law into effect immediately on October 2, 2024, H. 4885 has been in effect for two years. A yes vote on Question 9 would uphold the law as currently written. A no vote would repeal it.
H. 4885 made several changes to state firearm law. It directs the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services to build a real-time electronic system that requires registering all firearms along with the owner’s personal and licensing information. It requires anyone applying for a Firearm Identification Card or License to Carry to first obtain a basic firearms safety certificate. It mandates serial numbers on firearms, with exceptions for antiques, and penalizes possessing, making, or transferring untraceable firearms. It allows school administrators and licensed healthcare providers, in addition to police and family members already permitted under prior law, to petition a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order requiring a person to surrender firearms, licenses, and permits. And it lets judges order firearm surrender when issuing Harassment Prevention Orders.
The law also rewrote the state’s assault weapons ban. Massachusetts has banned assault weapons since 1998, but the state law never wrote its own definition of the term. Instead, it defined “assault weapon” by pointing to a list of specific gun models named in a 1994 federal law, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. That federal law expired in 2004, but Massachusetts kept relying on its list of named models to define which weapons the state ban covered. H. 4885 replaces that list-based approach with a broader category called “assault-style firearms,” defined by features rather than brand and model: semiautomatic centerfire rifles, semiautomatic pistols, and semiautomatic shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have certain additional features specified in the law, in addition to the models already named under the old ban. Firearms that met the old definition and were registered by August 1, 2024, are exempt from the new ban.
Path to the ballot
Gun Owners’ Action League announced the veto referendum effort against H. 4885 on August 12, 2024, and supporters organized a political action committee, The Civil Rights Coalition, chaired by Toby Leary, co-owner of Cape Gun Works, to run the campaign. Under the state’s referendum process, petitioners need 1.5% of the vote cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election to put the question before voters. An additional signature round would have been required to suspend the law until the 2026 election.
Before the second threshold could be reached, Healey signed the emergency preamble, putting the law into effect immediately, so the law could not be suspended regardless of how many signatures were later submitted. Healey said at the time that the law “bans ghost guns, strengthens the Extreme Risk Protection Order statute to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others, and invests in violence prevention programs,” and that it was important the measure “go into effect without delay.” Leary said he believed the governor had acted “outside of the constitutional provisions” for “purely political purposes to suppress a right.”
The Civil Rights Coalition submitted enough signatures to local election officials on October 9, 2024, and delivered them to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office on October 23. On November 22, 2024, the secretary’s office certified the signatures and certified the question for the 2026 ballot. On July 21, 2026, the Secretary of the Commonwealth announced the measure’s official designation as Question 9 and its position on the ballot.
Where this fits historically
Massachusetts voters have decided 22 veto referendums since the state established the initiative and referendum process in 1918, upholding 12 of the targeted laws and repealing 10, according to Ballotpedia. The most recent, in 2022, upheld a law allowing people without verified immigration status to obtain a driver’s license or vehicle registration using other forms of identification. Question 9 is Massachusetts's first veto referendum on firearms. Voters did previously decide a firearm-related initiative in 1976, when they rejected a measure that would have prohibited the possession, ownership, or sale of handguns.
Nationally, firearm policy has appeared on statewide ballots with some regularity over the past 15 years, including measures in Washington, California, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Maine, among others, with most of those measures approved by voters. Of the 23 states that allow veto referendums, only one other, Maryland in 1988, has put a firearms law to a referendum vote; Maryland voters upheld that law, which restricted handgun sales.
The case for upholding the law
Vote Yes for a Safe Massachusetts is leading the campaign for a yes vote, which would keep H. 4885 in place. Supporters include U.S. Representatives Jake Anchincloss, Katherine Clark, and Ayanna Pressley; Governor Healey; state Senator Cynthia Stone Creem; several state representatives; and labor unions such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Supporting organizations include Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, March for Our Lives, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, according to Ballotpedia.
The Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence has pointed to recent fatal shootings in Fitchburg and Springfield as evidence of what it calls an ongoing public health crisis, saying the law “gives us more of these tools” and that the coalition is “committed to protecting this lifesaving piece of legislation from repeal.” State Representative Michael Day has said the law does not burden responsible gun owners, calling that characterization a distortion pushed by what he described as “strident folks who are trying to flip the law.” The Yes on 9 campaign has cited GIFFORDS Law Center’s gun law scorecard, which has given Massachusetts an A grade for two consecutive years, as evidence the state’s approach is working.
In the official argument filed with the state, supporters write that the law banned ghost guns, outlawed devices that convert semiautomatic weapons into machine guns, expanded tools to prevent firearm suicide and mass shootings, and created a firearms database to track gun trafficking. They note that Massachusetts has a gun death rate 70% below the national average and argue that repealing the law “would make everyone in Massachusetts less safe.”
The case for repeal
The Civil Rights Coalition is leading the campaign to vote no on repealing H. 4885. Opponents include state Representatives John Gaskey and Normal Orrall, the Republican Party of Massachusetts, Smith & Wesson Brands, and organizations including Gun Owners’ Action League, the Massachusetts Trappers Association, and the Old Colony Sportsmen’s Association, according to Ballotpedia.
Leary has described gun rights activists, saying that “if you allow the right to keep and bear arms to be eroded, then every other civil right enumerated in our Bill of Rights could just as easily be taken away.” Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners’ Action League, has called the law’s passage “the worst attack on civil rights in modern U.S. history,” arguing it was drafted in secrecy and released only hours before the legislative vote. The Republican Party of Massachusetts has said the law “set a precedent that would allow Beacon Hill to erode protections outlined in our nation’s founding documents.”
In the official argument filed with the state, opponents describe the law as “a deeply flawed, 116-page piece of bureaucratic overreach” enacted without proper planning, pointing to the unfunded cost of building a real-time firearm tracking system and arguing that local police departments have been left to enforce what they call a confusing patchwork of rules. They write that state agencies have issued numerous clarifications for provisions they say treat historical re-enactors and antique collectors as criminals, and they argue the state already had strict gun laws before the 2024 changes.
The vote in the Legislature
H. 4885 passed the Massachusetts House on July 18, 2024, by a vote of 124 to 33, with two members not voting; 120 Democrats and four Republicans voted in favor, while one Democrat and 32 Republicans voted against. The Senate passed the bill the same day by a vote of 35 to 5, with 35 Democrats in favor and four Republicans and one Democrat opposed.
Where to find the full guide
The Information for the Voters guide is available online through the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Elections Division. It is offered in English, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Khmer, and an audio version is available. Residents with questions can contact the Elections Division at 617-727-2828.
This is the final installment in the series examining this year’s statewide ballot questions.
