It did happen here
It seemed like a scene from a movie: a man walking down the middle of Memorial Drive in Cambridge — home to Harvard and MIT — armed with an assault-style rifle and firing off an estimated 50-60 rounds as scared motorists scurried to safety until the suspect was shot and subdued.
By a uniformed state trooper and a man with a registered hand gun who turned out to be a former Marine (yes I know many people say there is no such thing.)
In the aftermath, we learned the man had a history of mental illness and had served time in prison for shooting at police across the river in Boston. And that his parole officer issued a warning even as Tyler Brown began his rampage.
We also learned he was out of prison because a judge had issued a sentence shorter than the one sought by police and prosecutors. In due course we would also learn that was partly the result of the fact a previous conviction had been thrown out because a rogue state drug lab chemist falsified reports.
All in all, what appears to be a massive breakdown of the legal and judicial process. And an incident likely to be at the center of the 2026 gubernatorial election where the eventual Republican nominee is going to try to pin a soft on crime tag on Governor Maura Healey — a former state attorney general.
But there will be another, more direct, issue for voters to decide in November: whether to repeal a 2024 law updating the state’s already tough firearms law that extended a ban on assault-type weapons and expanded the list of who is allowed to seek extreme risk protection orders, which requires individuals to surrender firearms, licenses and permits.
After all, gun rights advocates will argue, the law did nothing to change the long-held mantra crafted by a novelist and short-story author that “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Maybe a better catch phrase might be “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Let’s start with the obvious failure. How did this man — who was clearly seen as dangerous — come to possess such a powerful weapon that has essentially been banned to anyone who wasn’t registered to own one after August 1, 2024? And, if he had a valid registration, how did that happen?
Those are questions that need to be answered by public safety officials charged with keeping the peace.
The judicial failure has in effect, already been answered by the judge who handed down the unpopular sentence.
Based on audio recordings obtained by The Boston Globe, it appears Judge Janet Sanders found herself between a rock and a hard place.
Brown, convicted in 2009 of cocaine distribution, was among the thousands of defendants whose cases were compromised after former state chemist Annie Dookhan admitted to tampering with samples she was responsible for testing.
Without that conviction on his record, Brown was ineligible for an enhanced sentence aimed at armed career criminals; he also no longer qualified for a mandatory 10-year sentence, prosecutors said.
Speaking from the bench at the sentencing in August, 2021, Sanders told Brown she was taking a chance on him, especially since he admitted to shooting at police officers. She also acknowledged his troubled past and letters of support — as well as hearing a plea from an officer involved in that shooting who stressed Brown’s history of violence.
“I can’t look into a crystal ball and figure out what’s going to happen once you get out,” Sanders said. “But I do understand that I am taking on risk here. And I just pray that … my intuitions are right and that you have the ability, the smarts, the will, the support — not to go out there and endanger other people like you have in the past.”
For its part, the state Parole Board found Brown was “remorseful about the part he played in the offense” when they released him in March 2025, ordering him to meet certain conditions, including mental health treatment and drug testing.
So much for the thoughts and prayers school about gun violence.
So if the existing laws failed in this case, should they be repealed? The key provisions of the law being placed on the chopping block call for, among things:
Developing a real-time electronic system for firearm registration, requiring all firearms be registered with personal and licensing information;
changing the law from a ban on people possessing, selling, or otherwise transferring assault weapons to a ban on assault-style firearms, except those registered by August 1, 2024;
Requiring a person receive a basic firearms safety certificate to apply for a Firearm Identification Card or License to Carry;
Mandating serial numbers for firearms, except antiques, and enacting penalties for possessing, creating, or transferring untraceable “ghost guns”;
Allowing school administrators and licensed health care providers to request a court-ordered extreme risk protection order that requires individuals to surrender firearms, licenses, and permits; and
Permitting courts to order firearm surrender when issuing harassment prevention orders.
Gun rights advocates answer with a resounding “yes.” Toby Leary — co-founder of Cape Gun Works in Hyannis and a leader of the repeal effort, offers an analogy:
“It’s kind of like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it harder for sober drivers to buy cars. It’s not going to work. I think any intelligent, rational-thinking person would agree with that.”
Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League, who calls the law “the worst attack on civil rights in modern U.S. history,” argues the law has done nothing to prevent gun violence, arguing the term is a misnomer to begin with, since people, not guns, commit crimes.
Wallace claims gun-related homicides have “more than doubled” in the decades since the initial 1998 law went into effect, pointing to the state’s injury fatality reports, which show that 63 people were killed with a gun in 1998, compared with 121 in 2023.
While data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is largely consistent with state injury fatality reports, it shows a different pattern when accounting for population size.
Between 1996 and 2024, gun-related homicide rates in Massachusetts fluctuated between 1.0 and 1.9 per 100,000 residents.
Gun safety proponents reject Wallace’s complaint that the law is “the worse civil rights violation in modern U.S. history,” citing their own statistics:
“Massachusetts residents have the exact same constitutional right to own and carry firearms that they did before this law, and nothing in the law criminalizes law-abiding gun owners.
As of July 1, 2025, according to state data, there were over 550,000 active licenses to carry and more than 20,000 active firearm identification cards, which allow individuals to possess a rifle or shotgun.”
They point to the creation of the firearms data dashboard that tracks licenses, applications, incidents and the demographics of victims and offenders of crimes involving firearms. They also point to reducing the number of untraceable ghost guns and the training of medical providers on how to petition for extreme risk protection orders.
Which could have disarmed Brown before he shot up Memorial Drive.
As Ruth Zakarian, chair of the Yes for a Safe Massachusetts Committee, told The New Bedford Light, repealing the law:
“…would move us backward. We want to move the work of protecting our communities and our children from gun violence forward. The only way we can do that is if we protect the strong foundation that we have already built in the commonwealth when it comes to our gun safety laws.”
Few issues generate as much heat as the battle over the 2nd Amendment. It’s likely to do just that in the months leading up to November, even with a ballot likely to be stuffed with other questions about taxes and rent control.
But what happened on the streets of Cambridge reminds us Massachusetts is not immune from the countless violent outbursts that mark modern- day America.
And should prompt another overused catch phrase question: should we throw the baby out with the bathwater?