Massachusetts has among the most restrictive gun control laws in the country. The Bay State is one of an exceedingly small group of states, along with Illinois, to require a license to merely own any type of firearm. Long terrible on Second Amendment rights, in 2024 the state enacted Chapter 135, a 116-page bill that overhauled state gun laws to further attack law-abiding gun owners.
None of their gun control efforts should give readers the impression Massachusetts officials have a serious concern for public safety. Neighboring New Hampshire enjoys a lower homicide rate while having what some consider the least restrictive gun laws in the nation. Moreover, a recent high-profile case in Boston suburb Cambridge, Mass., highlighted the state’s lackadaisical approach to dealing with actual violent criminals.
On May 11, a suspect opened fire on a prominent street in Cambridge at around 12:30 p.m. Video of the incident went viral, showing the suspect seeming to shoot vehicles at random. Reports indicate that the individual fired 50 to 60 shots, striking more than a dozen vehicles and severely wounding two drivers.
As with so many crimes, the suspect was stopped by good guys with guns.
CBS News reported,
As people scattered from their cars, [Middlesex District Attorney Marian] Ryan said a State Police trooper and a civilian, a Marine veteran who has a license to carry a gun, went toward the suspect with their weapons.
"Both the trooper and the civilian fired their weapons, and that suspect was struck multiple times in the extremities," Ryan said.
Gun rights supporters are right to celebrate the heroic actions of the armed citizen who helped police take down the suspect. But law-abiding gun owners should also be appalled at how a state that tramples on their rights allowed this to take place at all.
According to a report from the Boston Globe, the suspect “previously was imprisoned for shooting at police.” The article stated:
[the suspect] is currently serving three years of probation after his release from state prison last year where he served a sentence for a May 2020 shooting in the South End that involved four Boston police officers. The officers were not injured but they were evaluated at a hospital. [The suspect] had been released from prison five months before that shooting. He was sentenced to five to six years with credit for 545 days time served.
Reports indicate that the suspect was released from prison in January.
According to CBS News, at the time of the suspect’s 2020 shooting, they were already “on probation for a 2014 conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon – a knife – and witness intimidation.”
The outlet noted that following the 2020 shooting:
At [the suspect’s] sentencing, prosecutors for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, working at the time under D.A. Rachael Rollins, requested 10 to 12 years behind bars for [the suspect]. Judge Janet Sanders instead sentenced him to five to six years behind bars.
MA ST 265 § 18 (“Assault with intent to rob or murder”) provides for up to 20 years imprisonment.
Rollins, to her credit, found the sentence so egregious that on August 19, 2021, she issued a prescient press release objecting to the judge’s actions. Citing the suspect’s criminal history, Rollins pointed out that the judge not only went below the office’s sentencing recommendation but also limited the suspect’s time behind bars by allowing him to serve multiple sentences concurrently rather than consecutively.
The release stated:
At the time of the armed assault, [the suspect] was on probation for a 2014 conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (knife) and witness intimidation. He was sentenced to four to five years in state prison for violating his probation. Judge Saunders determined that sentence will be served concurrently with the term she imposed on his most recent violent felonies.
Rollins told CBS News, “What the judge did was double harm.”
While Rollins took exception to the suspect’s light sentence, it seems unremarkable for Massachusetts. An investigative reporter for Boston 25 News went to the judge’s home where the judge told him, “I’m not going to comment. I have no memory of this case.”
While the judge might not remember, NBC10 Boston found a recording of the 2021 sentencing. Summarizing the contents, the outlet reported:
"[Suspect’s name], I do realize that I’m taking a chance on you," she said, in a recording of the sentencing obtained by NBC10 Boston Tuesday. "When people stand up, experienced police officers and probation officers, and they tell me, 'This guy is a danger to the community,' I hear that and it gives me… you know, I can’t look into a crystal ball and figure out what’s going to happen once you get out. But I do understand that I’m taking a risk here."
She added, "And I just pray that my intuitions are right and that you have the ability, the smarts, the will, the support not to go out there and endanger other people's lives as you have in the past."
…
Later, Sanders noted that it's very serious to open fire on a police officer, but "there's a difference between shooting at a police officer and shooting a police officer. And the reality is that no one was injured."
Thus, another police officer, and an armed citizen, were forced to temporarily incapacitate this dangerous individual where the state’s criminal justice system proved unwilling to do so. Law-abiding gun owners have every right to be disgusted with a government that fails in its most basic duty to protect the public from criminal violence while it works strenuously to prevent decent people from providing for their own protection.
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