This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
New Hampshire residents passing through Massachusetts should be allowed to carry their legally owned guns without being charged with a crime, Attorney General John Formella sought to persuade a Bay State court last year.
It didn’t work. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled its state’s laws should apply to two New Hampshire residents who were charged with carrying unlicensed firearms.
Now, Formella is trying to convince the nation’s highest bench to take on the case
He filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday alongside 24 other states, arguing that non-Massachusetts residents can’t be reasonably expected to follow the state’s lengthy and costly permitting process.
The brief also contends that Second Amendment rights should follow a person throughout the country and not only apply in the state where they live — an especially pertinent issue in New England, where compact geographic boundaries mean frequent travel across state lines.
“The Second Amendment does not end at the Massachusetts border,” Formella said in a statement. “Citizens should not face criminal charges simply for exercising their constitutional rights while traveling. Massachusetts’s approach treats nonresidents as second-class citizens, imposes arbitrary and excessive restrictions and contradicts both historical tradition and Supreme Court precedent.”
New Hampshire is a constitutional carry state, meaning any resident who is able to legally own a firearm can carry one without a license or permit. Massachusetts is not.
Formella’s brief accompanies a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court pleading the cases of Dean Donnell Jr. and Philip Marquis, two New Hampshire residents who were arrested separately for possessing firearms and ammunition. Donnell was also charged with having a large-capacity ammunition device for operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol.
A Lowell District Court judge dismissed those cases in 2023, saying Massachusetts couldn’t require non-residents to gain licenses. The Commonwealth then successfully appealed them both in its Supreme Judicial Court.
Two dozen states, many of them Republican-led, accompany New Hampshire on the brief. No other New England states signed on.
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