BOSTON —
Gov. Deval Patrick blamed firearms lobbyists Monday for his gun control legislation’s lack of progress amid another murder of a child over the weekend, drawing a quick rebuke from the Gun Owners Action League, who called Patrick’s bill flawed and ineffective.
Hours after speaking with the mother of Jaewon Martin, the 14-year-old murdered on a Boston basketball court Saturday, Patrick told reporters, “Look, there’s a lot of volume that the gun lobby has in this building, but it seems to me that people in neighborhoods, those mothers that are losing their children on the streets of our cities, the law enforcement who are having to deal with the proliferation of illegal firearms out there, used in the course of crime – those voices need to be raised, and those voices are greater in number, and I think at the end of the day greater in significance than the gun lobby.”
The state’s top firearms policy group said Patrick had mischaracterized lobbyists’ work.
James Wallace, executive director of GOAL, replied, “My first question is: Who’s the gun lobby? … I don’t lobby for guns, I lobby for people. That’s one of the tools they use to dehumanize us. We lobby for . . . civil rights and public safety.”
Patrick’s bill, stuck in the Judiciary Committee, would restrict lawful gun owners to one purchase per month and prohibit machine gun possession for anyone but law enforcement or the particular weapon’s licensed owner.
The measure also makes it a felony to possess guns while committing some crimes that would otherwise be misdemeanors. Patrick would also establish “dangerousness hearings” for gun crimes, allowing prosecutors to seek no-bail rulings from judges in dangerous criminal trials. A similar provision was included in the Senate’s crime bill.
The proposal has seen little traction on Beacon Hill, although recent decisions have demonstrated that current events can drive policy.