AI estimates Massachusetts gun law runs over 1,500 pages

With Massachusetts voters deciding the fate of Chapter 135 gun law, the head of the state's largest gun rights group asked an AI chatbot to compile every gun statute a Bay State owner needs to know, and the answer was a warning sign in itself.

Snapshot

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League, asked ChatGPT to produce a full-text document of every Massachusetts gun law and regulation, civil and criminal, that an owner needs to understand. According to Bearing Arms, the AI estimated 600 to 900 pages for state and federal statutes and ATF regulations alone, growing past 1,500 pages once case law and local ordinances were added.

Key points

• The request: Wallace told TGM by phone and email that he asked AI for a single document covering every gun law and regulation a Massachusetts owner needs to know.
• The response: ChatGPT replied that the full combination of Massachusetts law, federal statutes and ATF CFR regulations alone runs roughly 600 to 900 pages.
• The total scope: Adding case law and local ordinances pushed the figure past 1,500 pages, no longer fitting in a single file.
• The timing: The exchange came on the eve of a statewide vote on whether to keep or repeal Chapter 135, the Commonwealth's gun law.
• The columnist's view: Bearing Arms writer Tom Knighton argues that ignorance of the law is no defense, and suggests the sheer volume of statutes lets the state selectively enforce against gun owners who are unknowingly out of compliance.

Quick take

A body of gun law so large that even AI struggles to compile it in one file says something about how Massachusetts gun owners are expected to navigate the system. Knighton's point that more pages haven't made the state demonstrably safer is his own conclusion, but the page count itself, straight from the chatbot, is the kind of detail that speaks for itself.

Read the full story: bearingarms.com