Massachusetts: Court rejects bid by state to dismiss ‘assault weapon’ challenge

By Chris Eger

Healey, shown above at an event pushing for stronger gun laws last November, will now have to keep fighting the gun rights advocates as the case against her expanded gun ban moves forward. (Photo: Healey’s office)
The U.S. 1st Circuit this month turned away an effort by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to dismiss a lawsuit against her expansion of the state’s “assault weapon” ban.
The challenge, brought by a number of gun dealers and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, took the AG to court over her “enforcement notice” expanding the state’s longstanding ban on certain semi-automatic firearms to include guns that, up to that time, were considered “Massachusetts-compliant.”
Healey, who has been trying to get the case thrown out since it was first brought in 2016, will now have to keep fighting the gun rights advocates as the case moves forward.
The challenge came after Healy, a Democrat, declared she was banning the sale of “copycat” rifles that shared common parts such as triggers or bolt carriers with AR-15s, AK-variants, and others on the Commonwealth’s prohibited weapons list. One of the more novel interpretations Healy used in defining what an assault weapon was under the Commonwealth’s law was in focusing on gun actions

Source: Guns.com