First Circuit Asks Massachusetts: How Many Handguns Can You Ban Before It’s a Ban?

A federal appeals court put Massachusetts on the defensive Wednesday over a handgun roster that prevents licensed dealers from selling many popular pistols commonly available across the rest of the country.

During September 9 oral arguments in Granata v. Campbell, one judge cut directly through the Commonwealth’s defense that hundreds of other handguns remain available:

“How many can you ban before it’s a ban?”

That is the constitutional question Massachusetts would rather avoid. The Second Amendment does not give the state authority to decide which ordinary handguns are good enough for its citizens simply because bureaucrats leave them a list of government-approved alternatives.

The case was argued before First Circuit Judges David Barron, Gustavo Gelpí, and Julie Rikelman. Plaintiffs Stefano Granata, Cameron Prosperi, Gunrunner LLC, and the Firearms Policy Coalition are challenging Massachusetts’s Approved Firearms Roster and separate handgun-sales regulations enforced by Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

The full oral argument lasted just under 52 minutes and showed the panel wrestling with the difference between testing defective firearms and banning functional handguns because they lack features demanded by the state.

Massachusetts Has Two Layers of Handgun Restrictions

Massachusetts does not operate a single handgun roster. It imposes two overlapping regulatory systems.

The statutory roster limits licensed dealers to models meeting state requirements covering materials, testing, barrel length, and other characteristics. The attorney general’s regulations add separate requirements, including provisions addressing tamper-resistant serial numbers, child-access prevention, and—on semiautomatic handguns—a loaded-chamber indicator or magazine-disconnect mechanism.

A pistol’s appearance on the statutory roster does not necessarily mean a Massachusetts dealer may sell it. The attorney general’s additional regulations can still block the transaction.

That is why many ordinary pistols, including newer Glock models, remain unavailable through the normal dealer market even though they are lawful and commonly owned almost everywhere else. Granata specifically wants to purchase a Glock 19 Gen5 commercially for use as a carry gun, according to the plaintiffs’ opening appellate brief.

Attorney Will Bergstrom, arguing for the challengers, accurately described the Commonwealth’s backwards presumption:

“Everything is banned until we approve it.”

Under the Second Amendment, the government carries the burden of justifying its restrictions. Massachusetts instead begins by prohibiting dealer sales and forces manufacturers to win government approval before residents may purchase their products through ordinary channels.

The Panel Was Skeptical of Massachusetts’s Second Amendment Dodge

The district court ruled for Massachusetts after concluding that the challenged restrictions did not implicate the Second Amendment’s plain text. It reasoned that the plaintiffs still had access to hundreds of approved pistols and might obtain some restricted models through private transfers.

That reasoning treats the right to keep and bear arms like a government benefit satisfied by whatever substitutes the state chooses to leave available.

The First Circuit appeared troubled by that approach. When Massachusetts argued that it regulates commercial sales rather than possession or carry, one judge compared the theory to banning ink and then claiming newspapers remain free to publish.

Another judge questioned the state’s reliance on the number of approved handguns. Massachusetts pointed to more than 560 commercially available semiautomatic models and tens of thousands of annual handgun sales. But quantity does not answer the constitutional question. If leaving 560 models available permits the state to ban everything else, why not 100, 50, or one?

The Second Amendment protects arms, not a state-approved assortment of products that bureaucrats consider sufficient.

Private transfers are no answer either. Federal law generally requires an interstate handgun purchase to pass through a federally licensed dealer in the buyer’s state. A Massachusetts resident cannot simply cross the border, purchase a prohibited model from a New Hampshire dealer, and bring it home.

The remaining private market also depends on handguns already circulating inside Massachusetts. As Bergstrom explained in rebuttal, that secondary market exists downstream from the ordinary commercial market. The state cannot choke off the regular supply and then point to a shrinking pool of used guns as proof that the right remains intact.

Trump DOJ Backs the Gun Owners

The United States participated in the argument on the challengers’ side. Barry Arrington, chief of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section, argued that District of Columbia v. Heller forecloses Massachusetts’s substitute-gun defense.

The government cannot prohibit one protected arm merely because it allows another. Nor can Massachusetts excuse a partial violation by observing that it could have imposed a more sweeping one.

Arrington described the suggestion that America has a historical tradition of banning ordinary commercial sales of popular firearms as “preposterous.”

DOJ’s amicus brief argues that Massachusetts has created a preclearance system excluding handguns in common use. According to the department, the Commonwealth cannot accomplish indirectly—through dealer restrictions and product requirements—what it could not constitutionally accomplish through a direct possession ban.

The Fight Over Historical Gun-Proving Laws

The harder portion of the argument concerned the second stage of the Bruen test: whether Massachusetts can demonstrate that its restrictions are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Commonwealth leaned heavily on early Massachusetts and Maine gun-proving laws. Those laws required certain barrels or firearms to be inspected or tested before sale to identify dangerous defects.

The panel repeatedly pressed Bergstrom to explain why those laws were not adequate historical analogues. Massachusetts argued that both the old and modern laws serve the same general purpose: protecting gun users from accidents.

Defining the tradition as broadly as “gun safety” would gut Bruen. Nearly every gun restriction ever written is defended in the language of public safety. The Supreme Court requires courts to examine how and why a historical law burdened the right, not merely whether the government invokes a similar slogan.

The distinction here is substantial. Gun-proving laws attempted to determine whether an individual firearm or barrel would fail when fired. Massachusetts prohibits dealer sales of pistols that function exactly as their manufacturers intended because the guns lack an additional state-selected feature.

A handgun without a Massachusetts-approved loaded-chamber indicator is not defective. It is an ordinary, functional firearm trusted by millions of Americans.

Massachusetts also cited federal firearm-procurement standards, including the government’s historical decision not to purchase a Samuel Colt design over safety concerns. The panel recognized the problem with that comparison: the government deciding which gun it will purchase is nothing like the government prohibiting two private parties from completing a voluntary sale.

Attorney Kostas Moros, who followed the argument and commented on X, also noted that the Commonwealth’s historical case rests on only two proving laws. Two isolated state enactments do not establish a broad national tradition of imposing government-mandated design features on commonly owned handguns.

Interesting that a judge is asking about dividing up the roster arguments between what the statute requires, and the AG regulations.

(It would be an incomplete but significant win if they struck the AG regulations, because those block a lot of guns in MA) https://t.co/vMW0LdhsmK

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) September 9, 2026

A Narrow but Important Victory May Be Possible

The argument revealed one vulnerability for the plaintiffs. The panel questioned whether they have standing to challenge every provision of the attorney general’s regulations.

When asked to identify complaint allegations showing that requirements other than the loaded-chamber-indicator provision prevented the plaintiffs from purchasing or selling specific guns, Bergstrom could not point the court to one.

That could lead the First Circuit to narrow the case rather than resolve the entire regulatory scheme at once.

The judges repeatedly separated the statutory roster from the attorney general’s additional regulations and asked the parties to analyze them individually. That creates the possibility of an incomplete but still meaningful victory: the court could leave portions of the statutory testing system intact while striking the attorney general’s feature mandates that keep many popular handguns out of the dealer market.

No decision was issued from the bench, and questioning alone does not guarantee how the panel will rule. The judges took the historical proving-law argument seriously and challenged both sides.

But Massachusetts struggled to explain the limiting principle behind its position. If the state may ban dealer sales of any commonly owned handgun as long as some alternatives remain, the Second Amendment protects only what the government graciously decides to approve.

That is not a constitutional right. It is a bureaucratic permission slip.

About Duncan Johnson:

Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.