Yet you need a FOID, which is one of the most intrusive requirements in the country. You have to get a special ID just to purchase a firearm, any firearm. You must posses that ID, and it is subject to renewal and state bureaucracy, meaning your continued lawful use and possession of arms is tightly controlled.
Perhaps that is because by the time someone actualy gets a firearm they have dealt with more BS, scrutiny, backgrounds checks, and discretionary permission than the CCW requirements of many places? You must also renew your license just to continue to legaly posses a firearm. Combined with extremely restrictive transport and storage laws, and one of the worst jury selections if you ever actualy do need to defend yourself and I would not call MA friendly by any means.
Guns are classified into catagories and even a standard pump or semi shotgun with 6-10 round capacity is a "large capacity" firearm in MA requiring a class A license (as opposed to the class B which is still more trouble than a CCW in some states). The same firearm in CA could be purchased by someone with no license whatsoever walking into a store, purchasing it and picking it up 10 days later.
You even have to notify 3 seperate government entities if you move because you are an evil firearm owner that must be tracked.
Anyone that would call MA decent in reference to guns is crazy. It is definately in the top 4 of most restrictive states in the US, if not higher.
That is because it is still a relic leftover from when CCW was only granted to Peace Officers or retired Peace Officers and a select few elite citizens ( the practice still continued in most well populated counties).
New laws make exemptions for officers on many things so they no longer need a CCW. If the state ever became may issue, or issuing became more common then the rules would be revised I imagine. The ability to get a CCW in a hardly populated eastern rural county and then excercise it while traveling through an extremely anti gun location like San Francisco (which does not even like locked up guns in the home and has actualy voted to ban handguns entirely, and is only kept in this world because it must still exist within the state...) would vanish.
Like I said the current form of CCW is a relic, existing before the time when normal citizens were granted CCWs anywhere, even rural places. If it became may issue, or even more common, I imagine they would suddenly be restricted to the county they were issued in and not valid statewide.
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