Buyers Crowd Woburn Gun Store After AG's Enforcement Notice

Photo Credit: Joe Lipovich, Patch Staff

WOBURN, MA — Gun buyers and enthusiasts flocked to the Four Seasons Firearms store on Winn Street Wednesday after Attorney General Maura Healy announced an enforcement notice cracking down on the sale of certain modified firearms.

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An enforcement notice went out to 350 manufacturers and sellers Wednesday, notifying them the AG's office is cracking down on the sale of certain modified guns, which will now be treated as "copies and duplicates" of assault weapons as defined (and long banned) under state law.

Overnight, a petition to overturn the new enforcement policy garnered nearly 14,000 signatures.

“The gun industry has openly defied our laws here in Massachusetts for nearly two decades,” Healey said in a statement Wednesday. “That ends today. We have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that combat-style weapons are off our streets and out of the hands of those who would use them to kill innocent people. Increasingly, these guns are the weapon of choice for mass shooters, and we will do everything we can to prevent the kinds of tragedies here that have occurred in places like Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown and Aurora.”

Gun owners flocked to the Four Seasons Firearms store in Woburn, with a line forming outside the door of the store Wednesday afternoon.

One man in line told Patch that the policy won't do anything to prevent violent actions or events.

"Any firearm used for anything other than lawful purposes has the same potential," the man, who wished to remain anonymous, told Patch. "Whether it's a handgun or any other type of gun, it's all who it's in the hands of and what their intentions are."

Assault weapons (as defined by state law) have been banned in Massachusetts since 1998. Healey said her decision Wednesday is a new interpretation of the old law, determined after the horrific mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida, night club last month spurred her office to reexamine existing enforcement policy.

In a statement on Healey's enforcement notice, Gun Owners' Action League Executive Director Jim Wallace cast Healey's decision as an abrupt, politically motivated overstep and stated that the enforcement notice "is not very clear."

"Virtually every semi-automatic that utilizes a detachable magazine has the same operating system or firing mechanism, so what does this mean? The short answer is we simply don’t know," he wrote. "Our best advice to firearm retailers for now is to err on the side of caution. These new rules may cover a lot more than just what we might think."

Healy's notice indicates that dealers who currently have stock of these weapons on hand may transfer that stock to out-of-state jurisdictions but the firearms nay not be sold to out-of-state buyers.

"All of these people are here because they feel its their Second Amendment right to purchase whatever firearms they feel they want to," the man told Patch. "If there's a government that's trying to disarm a nation, that's a problem."

The Four Seasons gun shop was not immediately available for comment.

Patch reporter Alison Bauter contributed to this report.