Question 9: Firearms Law Referendum

No. The pre-2024 baseline already included licensing, mandatory safety training, sales tracking, and family-initiated red-flag petitions, and a NO vote doesn't touch that older framework. But a NO vote does repeal everything Chapter 135 changed in 2024, and that's a longer list than the handful usually mentioned (see the next question).

All of Chapter 135, which is broader than most coverage suggests. Using the Secretary of the Commonwealth's own summary of the law, it:

• Added school administrators and licensed healthcare providers to those who can ask a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order, and let courts order firearms surrendered alongside a harassment prevention order.
• Penalized untraceable “ghost guns” and required serial numbers on privately made and 3D-printed firearms, including unfinished frames and receivers.
• Set 21 as the minimum age to own semiautomatic rifles or shotguns.
• Redefined “machine gun” to include bump stocks, trigger cranks, Glock switches and auto sears, and widened the definition of “silencer.”
• Changed licensing review and dealer inspection rules, including State Police training and a test for new applicants.
• Clarified how firearms may be carried and transported in vehicles and ATVs.
• Prohibited firearms in government buildings, polling locations and schools, with certain exceptions.
• Criminalized discharging a firearm that strikes a building in use.
• Created a publicly accessible dashboard of anonymized firearm data and two special legislative commissions.

Because this question starts from the opposite place. The other eight are citizen petitions proposing something that isn't law yet, so a YES adopts it. Question 9 is a referendum on a law that already passed: the Legislature enacted Chapter 135 in 2024, and opponents gathered signatures to put it in front of voters and try to undo it. When the law already exists, the ballot asks whether to keep it: YES leaves Chapter 135 in force, NO strikes it from the books. This is sometimes called a “people's veto,” because voters rather than the Legislature get the last word on a law that already passed.

Yes. Governor Healey signed an emergency preamble in October 2024, which kept Chapter 135 in force rather than letting the referendum suspend it until the election. So the law has been operating since 2024, and a NO vote would undo something already in effect, not block something from starting. One deadline under it: the state's firearm law page gave October 28, 2026 as the date by which firearms had to be serialized and registered in the state's online system (antique and permanently disabled guns are exempt).