Last week, the Massachusetts State Police released the new curriculum and requirements to get a License To Carry to instructors. Disappointers never disappoint.
The Massachusetts gun laws changed in 2024 after a year of Gun Law Listening Tours and pushback from the subjects of the Commonwealth. After the bill was signed into law, it was supposed to go into effect in 90 days. The governor signed an emergency preamble to make the law go into effect right away, as the peasants got a referendum going. Then the legislature slipped into another bill that the new training requirements were going to be postponed for 18 months to figure out what the state police and Beacon Hill wanted the course to be.
This week, the Massachusetts State Police dropped a bomb and the ball at the same time. The new course is… not written by the state police. They want instructors to develop their own course with the state’s requirements. Then, instructors need to submit the curriculum for approval before they can start teaching the new course. The live fire component is still being figured out.
The Mass State Police had 18 months, a year and a half, to figure out what they wanted. And they have nothing.
I get the police did not want to do the job the politicians laid out for them. I wouldn’t either. It would have been easy and simple for them to add a suicide prevention video and whatever they wanted for disengagement training to the NRA Basics of Pistol Shooting course, which has live fire and a written exam. It just could not be that way, easy and semi-sensible.
This month, instructors are going to be writing their own courses and waiting for approval before they can start teaching in April 2026. The state has not approved any courses from anyone for years. But in March 2026, they are going to start approving them. I am not sure how many instructors there are in the Bay State, but it is safe to assume there are a couple of thousand. Is the state police really going to hash through them in less than a month?
I do not think so. But I hope I am wrong.
For years, there have been approved courses for the Firearm Identification card or License to Carry. They include courses from Mass Chiefs of Police, courses from the SIG Academy, the Smith & Wesson Academy, the Liberal Gun Club, and, naturally, the National Rifle Association, to mention a few. There is a total of 29 of them. But now, there could be several hundred, even thousands.
I am going to try to be Mr. Brightside. When I became friends with several instructors around the country, it boggled my mind that someone would offer clients and students their own courses to be licensed courses. I understand courses after someone has a License To Carry, maybe a course on how to carry or one on defensive shooting. I am a big fan of getting training, learning the fundamentals of shooting and handling, learning about, and studying self-defense and tactics.
One of the topics required is suicide prevention. The state actually made the presentation for this portion of the course. All the instructors are supposed to use it. There is a slide that talks about people in Sri Lanka using pesticides to commit suicide. They point out they removed only the highly “humantoxic pesticides” and suicides by pesticides dropped by 50%. I guess they are trying to draw a similarity between people having access to firearms and pesticides and using them to take their own lives. Their basic point is that if you have a firearm, you are more likely to take your own life using that firearm.
The good news is that they put a link to the Walk The Talk America website for people to get help. WTTA has been bridging the gap between firearms and mental health for years. They do have a free and anonymous mental health screening on their website.
I reached out to the Sergeant who sent the email, asking if the previous courses would still be accepted with the new sections and modules. There was no reply. There is less than a month for instructors to get something written, approved, and make a presentation, and have handouts for students and clients. Now, we will find out how quickly the MSP will approve courses.
