Massachusetts Gun Violence Up Despite Tougher Laws on Firearms

Some blame out-of-state guns brought from New Hampshire and Maine.

Despite it's relatively strong gun laws, Massachusetts has seen a rise in the number of firearm-related injuries over the past decade, according to the Boston Globe. In particular, murders involving guns have gone up (188 percent), but so have aggravated assaults (26.7 percent), armed robberies (20.7 percent) using guns.  The leap in these types of crime has occurred even as Massachusetts tightened its gun laws in 1998, including a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, tougher licensing requirements and stricter rules on how guns are stored.  Some are attributing the rise to the high number of guns brought in from out of state, especially from New Hampshire and Maine, which don't require a permit to buy a gun.  "Those states alone …

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