Ma**h*** Firearms is among more than 80 gun-related tenants packed inside the Mill.Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Officials in this town of 10,000 say they don’t have nearly enough resources to police “The Mill,” where the number of gun tenants has soared from three to at least 80 over the last eight years, many of them openly defying Attorney General Maura Healey’s efforts to close loopholes in the state’s assault weapons ban. The chief of the 21-member Police Department, Matthew Pinard, has said that officers have found only a handful of violations among the vendors, but admitted his force lacks the time and expertise to thoroughly review all transactions.
“We’re just a small little outfit here,” Mark Montanari, the Planning Board chair, said Monday night. “If we could get some state help going in and checking everybody and see what they’re actually selling and if it’s legal to sell it, that would be great.”
Since the Globe’s story ran on Sept. 10, Pinard said he’s been in contact with the attorney general’s office, the Middlesex district attorney, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But Pinard said he “will not comment on any investigation, whether it is ongoing or in the future.”
In the meantime, some Littleton officials hope a developer will make all the gun dealers disappear. The sprawling 19-century industrial building has been listed for sale since
the longtime owner died in April and control of the property went to his widow and the daughters of his late business partner.
“This is not a situation that we would have chosen,” Wilhelmina Ulbrich, one of the heirs, told the Globe in July. “The fact that this kind of industry is allowed to happen in this country is kind of mind-boggling.”
Littleton, a town of 10,000, had little experience with gun dealers before they started flocking to the Mill around 2016.Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Ulbrich said last week that she and the other owners “decided several months ago to disallow new gun tenants.”
Montanari, the Planning Board chair, said at Monday’s meeting the town is imploring the owners to sell the property to someone who would redevelop it rather than continue leasing it to the current tenants. “Hopefully we can get somebody who wants to buy the building, to reposition it, and then hopefully most of our problems will go away,” he said.
More than just gun dealers would be displaced if the 100,000-square-foot Mill were shut down. Ulbrich said three-quarters of the space is occupied by non-gun businesses, such as furniture and repair shops, a radio station, a piano restoration company, and a music school.
For gun enthusiasts, the Mill has become a kind of refuge in deep blue Massachusetts, and a place where they can find almost any kind of gun — including pistols that aren’t on the state’s
approved roster, and AR-15s and other semiautomatic weapons. Such sales to buyers who aren’t in law enforcement could be a felony in this state, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But the dealers have insisted that by modifying the weapons, or disassembling them and selling them as parts, their transactions are perfectly legal.
After the Globe’s story was published, several dealers said they’ve seen an uptick in foot traffic, but they’ve also received hate mail and death threats.
Only a handful of gun dealers at the Mill have nondescript signs on the outside of the building, leaving most people totally unaware that the building houses the largest cluster of federally-licensed firearms manufacturers and dealers in the nation.Lane Turner/Globe Staff
As for the sudden push to shut them down, one dealer said vendors like him are accustomed to blustering outrage over guns in this state. “If they take action against us, it becomes more interesting nationally,” the dealer said, adding, “at the end of the day, what occurs at the Mill is lawful.”
None of the gun dealers at the Mill would comment using their name.
The Mill has emerged as a test for Healey’s attempt to strengthen enforcement of the state’s assault weapons ban. In 2016, she issued a controversial
notice outlining how she would enforce the ban, threatening to bring charges against dealers who sold semiautomatic weapons with modifications meant to ensure that they didn’t meet the legal definition of a banned “assault weapon.” Such modifications had been an accepted practice in the trade for nearly two decades.
Healey’s notice has been upheld in court, but her office has yet to charge a single dealer with violating the assault weapons ban, her spokesperson confirmed. And her window to do so is closing; she’s finishing up her second term and is now the front-runner for governor.
With six years of no enforcement, some in the gun world, including many Mill dealers, have gotten more brazen in ignoring her decrees. The longtime Mill property manager, Jack Lorenz, even
has a saying: “Healey language is not spoken at the Mill.”
The Globe, in its Sept. 10 story, identified 16 dealers there who advertised or displayed semiautomatic weapons that would meet the legal definition of an “assault weapon,” but for modifications of the sort Healey forbid. The Globe also identified 20 vendors who advertised or displayed upper and lower receivers for these weapons — that parts of the gun that house the main operating mechanisms — which Healey
has said would be treated legally as the same as selling a complete assault weapon.
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