A pistol license. There are three things you can get in Massachusetts -- a Firearms Identification Card (restricted), which lets you carry pepper spray (it's illegal to carry pepper spray or mace without it). A Firearms Identification Card, which lets you carry a rifle or shotgun -- that requires a background check, but not a course, and I think you can get it when you're 18. A Firearms License, which lets you carry anything which is legal in Massachusetts -- that requires a background check and a safety-and-laws class. And Massachusetts ONLY allows concealed carry -- showing a weapon in a place where it wouldn't be expected to is illegal.
As for what is legal in Massachusetts, that's probably worth another post on its own; in my opinion, some of the laws make sense, and some don't. Bump stocks are illegal in Massachusetts, as they should be -- they should never have been legal anywhere in the first place, and I actually wish they'd been banned proactively, rather than in response to the Las Vegas shooting. Magazines which carry more than ten rounds are illegal, unless they were made and brought into Massachusetts before September 14, 1994, but they're really easy to get, because once they said that "next year on this date it will be illegal to bring these into Massachusetts", everyone who manufactured them started cranking them out as fast as they could, and even now, twenty-five years later, there are crates of the things. Even so, I think that the high-capacity-magazine ban makes sense. Anything based on the AR-15 platform is illegal unless it was made before 1994; I think this is incredibly silly, but discussing the AR-15 needs to be its own post. The short version is that it is terribly silly to discuss the AR-15 by itself, since it's a distraction from the actual issues -- the AR-15 is just one of a large range of functionally similar things, and if the problem people have is the function, we should be talking about THAT, but it's not entirely clear that everybody talking about the AR-15 is clear on what the function IS.
I know plenty of people who are against things that work like the AR-15, but they aren't against the AR-15 specifically. But, like I said, that should be its own post.
no subject
As for what is legal in Massachusetts, that's probably worth another post on its own; in my opinion, some of the laws make sense, and some don't. Bump stocks are illegal in Massachusetts, as they should be -- they should never have been legal anywhere in the first place, and I actually wish they'd been banned proactively, rather than in response to the Las Vegas shooting. Magazines which carry more than ten rounds are illegal, unless they were made and brought into Massachusetts before September 14, 1994, but they're really easy to get, because once they said that "next year on this date it will be illegal to bring these into Massachusetts", everyone who manufactured them started cranking them out as fast as they could, and even now, twenty-five years later, there are crates of the things. Even so, I think that the high-capacity-magazine ban makes sense. Anything based on the AR-15 platform is illegal unless it was made before 1994; I think this is incredibly silly, but discussing the AR-15 needs to be its own post. The short version is that it is terribly silly to discuss the AR-15 by itself, since it's a distraction from the actual issues -- the AR-15 is just one of a large range of functionally similar things, and if the problem people have is the function, we should be talking about THAT, but it's not entirely clear that everybody talking about the AR-15 is clear on what the function IS.
I know plenty of people who are against things that work like the AR-15, but they aren't against the AR-15 specifically. But, like I said, that should be its own post.