496 documents: the statutes and regulations, what 232 municipal licensing authorities publish, the jury instructions, agency guidance and commentary. Every entry dated and linked to where it came from.
A compilation, not a guide.
Massachusetts firearms law is not kept in one place. The licensing statutes have been rewritten five times since 2016. Two agencies issue regulations under them. And because licensing is administered locally, hundreds of cities and towns publish their own instructions about what an applicant has to produce, on pages that are revised without notice and that sometimes describe a version of the law which lapsed years ago.
This is an attempt to gather it all into one place for easier, searchable access. Every entry records either a primary source or a body's own published material, with the address it came from and the date it was last confirmed. Each is marked as one or the other, because a statute and a police department's web page are meaningfully different from a legal perspective and the difference is usually the whole question.
Where the sources conflict, the project will always try to say so. Where a question is unsettled, it says that too, and sets out what can be said on either side.
What it will not do is tell you whether you are in compliance. That turns on facts about you and your particular circumstances. This is a place to find the sources, read them, and check them against each other.
As always, if this raises questions you cannot comfortably answer, consult an experienced attorney.
What serialization and registration each require, who is exempt from which, and why two official sources give two different dates.
What a Yes and a No each do to St. 2024, c. 135, and what G.L. c. 4, ยง 6 says happens to the prior law and to pending prosecutions if it is repealed.
Every source, its retrieval date, and what changed since. The page that makes the rest of the collection checkable.
Entries are marked either primary source or as stated by the department, and the distinction is the whole point. A statute or a regulation carries the force of law. A municipal page records what a licensing authority says it requires, which is a different thing and is sometimes a different thing from what the statute authorizes.
Every entry carries the address it came from and the date it was last confirmed. "Last confirmed" means the last time the source was checked and still said what we recorded, not the day it was first captured. Municipal pages are revised without notice and without any marker that anything changed, which is why the date is on the entry rather than on this page.
It is not a guide to Massachusetts firearms law, and it does not tell you whether you are in compliance. It is a place to find the sources and read them. Where a question turns on facts particular to you, that is a conversation, not a lookup.