Frequently Asked Questions

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The whole discussion of gun shops in Sudbury began in the spring of 2023 when a citizen’s petition at Annual Town Meeting sought a bylaw change that would prevent any gun shops from opening anywhere in Sudbury.  

Opponents of the bylaw change argued the Town would be sued by the NRA, GOAL or some other gun organization if it passed the citizens petition.  But very little, if any, real research, legal or otherwise, had been done on the issue at that time. The citizen’s petition failed to pass and the Select Board said it would look into the issue.  

Since then, a slim 3-2 majority of the Select Board has pursued only one alternative: to allow two gun shops by “special permit” in Sudbury’s Industrial Districts. During that time, the slim majority of the Select Board refused to conduct open hearings with concerned residents before the bylaw was drafted and has refused to name a subcommittee or task force to publicly research the issue.  

We do not need, and are not required to have, gun shops in Sudbury. Please dive deeper into this website to learn the truth about this proposed bylaw which permanently allows gun shops in Sudbury.  Please vote against the Article 16 at Town Meeting.  We can keep gun shops out of Sudbury. 

Currently Sudbury has no zoning bylaw specifically regulating gun shops.  In theory, a gun shop could open in any zoning district permitting retail sales.  No gun shop has attempted to open in Sudbury.  But instead of looking for ways to keep gun shops from opening in Sudbury, especially in light of the fact that gun shops currently exist in the surrounding towns, a narrow majority of the Select Board decided to permit two gun shops to open in the Industrial Districts, by special permit only.   

This special permit designation would allow the Select Board to tightly control what the gun shops look like and how they could operate, but it does not prohibit the gun shops. 

Sudbury has many Industrial Districts, but the only parcels that qualify to apply for the special permit are in Industrial District-4 (ID-4). ID-4 is located on the south side of Route 20 and runs from the eastern edge of the Coolidge Apartments to the Wayland town line. There are five parcels in ID-4, on your left as you enter Sudbury from Wayland, that qualify to apply for a special permit to open a gun shop.   

The Mass Central Rail Trail runs along the south side of the district and the bylaw permits the gun store parcel to be within 250’ of that rail trail.  Across Route 20 from the district are Longfellow Tennis & Health, Holistic Health, Youth Sports, and Children’s Center; New England Ballet; Dancers Workshop; Town Line Hardware; Papa Gino’s; Point Grill; and more businesses.   A very short distance away are Sudbury residences, both on Route 20 and just off Route 20.   

The bylaw’s 250' setback requirement is significantly less than the 500’ or 1000’ setback requirement imposed on gun shops by many other municipal gun shop bylaws in the area.  Obviously, a smaller setback requirement provides less safety to the surrounding neighborhood.  But the Select Board majority, reduced the Sudbury setback requirement in order to shoehorn the gun shops into district ID-4.   

Is this really what Sudbury wants? 

No, it does not.  

Why not? 

Because the safety buffer set by the Select Board, known as the ‘setback’, is much less than the law allows, and less than in other communities.  The shorter the setback the less safe we are. The Attorney General has determined a setback of 500 feet and even 1000 feet does not conflict with the Massachusetts Constitution or state law. Other towns have much larger setbacks that have been approved by the Massachusetts Attorney General. Sudbury deserves the same protections.

• Newton 

Newton recently adopted a new gun control law.  Under the new rules, a firearms business cannot operate within 1,000 feet of daycares, schools (from preschool through university level), playgrounds or parks, religious buildings, libraries, nursing homes, or existing firearms businesses. 

• Plainville 

Plainville's bylaw says; 

Firearm business uses shall not be located within 1,000 feet of any private or public K-12 school. 

Firearm business uses shall not be located within 500 feet of any day-care center, preschool, child-care facility, or an existing firearm business use at another location, whether such firearm business use is located within or without the Town's boundaries. 

• Sudbury 

In Sudbury there are daycares, preschools, after school programs, nursing homes, playgrounds, parks, and day camps all located less than 1000 feet from where the Select Board intends to allow gun shops to operate, in ID-4.

The Select Board majority realized that using the Giffords Model bylaw, which allowed a setback of up to 1000 feet from sensitive areas, or the permissible Massachusetts-allowed setback of 1000 feet, there was no place in Sudbury for gun shops. 

So, the Select Board intentionally reduced the larger setbacks Sudbury was entitled to use, so it could ‘shoehorn’ in gun shops.    

However, by making the setbacks shorter, gun shops would be allowed to open in close proximity to “sensitive” uses like childcare facilities, which is what we don’t want. 

If the setback adopted by the Select Board was 500 or 1000 feet, which it could have done, it would prohibit gun shops from opening in ID-4 because it is too close to a child care center and several other sensitive areas.  

Residents should have had a say. 

Had the Select Board appointed a subcommittee that could gather input from knowledgeable, safety-minded residents, as they were asked to do, the proposed bylaw may have provided stronger protections for residents. Instead, we are presented with a proposed bylaw that permanently gives gun shops the ability to operate in Sudbury, with public safety provisions that are a fraction of what neighboring towns have put in place.

Quite simply: the Select Board majority didn’t want to engage residents until long AFTER they finished drafting the bylaw. The process of producing the gun shops bylaw has been neither open nor transparent. That is why you have not heard about it.  

Several residents asked the Select Board to open up the process and make it transparent by appointing a committee or a task force that includes concerned residents, to meet regularly and openly. The three-member majority refused.  

Gun violence and the availability of guns are major public concerns. Residents deserve a seat at the table and a voice when it comes to a law that would allow gun shops in Sudbury and permanently alter the character of a neighborhood. 

Residents had a right to be heard when there was still an opportunity to shape the bylaw. Instead, they’re being told to go along with a draft that has had zero resident input.  

The Select Board majority has reluctantly said it will hold an ‘information session’ to tell you what they have already decided the gun shop bylaw will be, about 30 days before Annual Town Meeting, on March 28.  

The refusal of the three gun shop bylaw proponents to engage the public on a complex, confusing, high profile safety issue of concern is disrespectful. The public has been shut out and shut down. 

And relatedly, can we keep gun shops out of Sudbury?

These questions are good, and most certainly appropriate to ask. The problem in answering them is that the law regarding gun shops and local zoning regulations is unknown. The US Supreme Court has never addressed the issue. Even though the Supreme Court had an opportunity to address the issue directly in 2018, it declined to take that appeal. Only one federal Court of Appeals has addressed the issue of gun shops and zoning, and that decision upheld the right of a California county to bar a gun shop from opening because the gun shop would have been in a prohibited zone pursuant to the local zoning laws. Teixeira v. County of Alameda, 873 F.3d 670 (9th Cir. 2017), (cert. den. 2018). In that case, the court stated: “that the Constitution does not confer a freestanding right on commercial proprietors to sell firearms.” Teixeira at 673. In short, no one can know if a lawsuit might be brought in any circumstances. As Sudbury Town Counsel has said, the Town can be sued for anything. 

However, there is a way to assess the risk of a suit in the circumstances we now face. That way is to do a risk analysis of the risks any potential owner of a gun shop might face if that potential owner decided to sue the Town of Sudbury over the proposed bylaw or over a different bylaw which expressly or effectively prohibits gun shops in Sudbury.  

In that regard, it is helpful to start by looking at what happened and didn’t happen in the Township of Piscataway, NJ almost 6 years ago. In 2018, the Piscataway Township Council unanimously passed a unique, first of its kind in New Jersey, gun ordinance which banned the retail sale of guns and ammunition within 1000 feet of protected areas. Just before the unanimous Council vote passing the ordinance, the Council received a letter from an attorney for the New Jersey association of gun owners asserting that the proposed gun ordinance was unlawful and implicitly, threatening a lawsuit. But no suit was ever brought. Why? 

To look at the “why” question, let’s look at the risks a potential gun shop owner might face in suing a Massachusetts town like Sudbury, should Sudbury pass a bylaw that substantially restricts or effectively or explicitly bans gun shops in town. The argument that any potential gun shop owner would have to make in bringing a lawsuit against Sudbury seeking to overturn any gun shop bylaw is that every single one of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts must zone for at least two gun shops. Does that make sense? Does anyone really believe that is the law? 

In addition, there are firearm facilities and/or gun shops in Maynard, Hudson, Marlborough, Framingham and Natick. As the court in the Teixeira case specifically held, there is no constitutional right for commercial proprietors to sell firearms. The right to sell firearms is ancillary or corollary to the Second Amendment right to own and bear firearms. Therefore, in order for a potential gun shop owner to overturn any Sudbury gun shop bylaw, that potential gun shop owner would have to prove that Sudbury, by expressly or effectively not allowing a gun shop, is putting an undue burden on gun owners in the Town of Sudbury. 

Again, it is productive to turn to the decision of the Court of Appeals in the Teixeira case. Alameda County, California is 739 square miles (30 times the size of Sudbury). The Court of Appeals noted in its decision in Teixeira that there were only 10 gun shops in Alameda County. That is one gun shop for every 74 square miles (three times the size of Sudbury). If 10 gun shops in a county 30 times the size of Sudbury is not an undue burden on gun owners, is it rational to believe that requiring gun owners, in Sudbury to travel to any one of five surrounding towns to get to a gun shop is an undue burden? 

Furthermore, any lawsuit brought by a potential gun shop owner against Sudbury would be brought in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal districts in the country. Any appeal would go to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, one of the most liberal federal appeals courts in the country. The Supreme Court refused to take the appeal from the decision of the Court of Appeals in the Teixeira case. Is there any reasonable likelihood that the Supreme Court would take an appeal in a case involving the little town of Sudbury? 

Would a potential gun shop owner really want to sue Sudbury in this legal jurisdiction when the gun shop owner bringing the suit could easily lose, set bad precedent for all gun shop owners, and have to pay attorney’s fees. That all seems to be a significant risk that is not worth taking. 

Sudbury received two letters from the Giffords Law Center that have received some attention. This op-ed makes several key points about what those letters get right and wrong: 

https://sudburyweekly.com/the-giffords-law-center-what-they-got-right-and-what-they-got-wrong-about-gun-shops-in-massachusetts/

The draft bylaw has been included, in different forms, deep within various Select Board meeting packets that can be hundreds of pages long. It has not been prominently published anywhere on the Town website until mid-March 2024. You can (finally) review it here. 

Even as the Select Board majority voted to put the bylaw on the warrant for Annual Town Meeting on January 31, important provisions were still being discussed and some members did not have a good grasp on the ramifications of the edits they were making. We have no way of knowing if the Select Board will continue to make consequential changes to the bylaw before Annual Town Meeting.

We’re a group of Sudbury residents, including lawyers, gun safety activists, parents and involved citizens who feel compelled to oppose Article 16 for the good of the Town and the safety of our community. Due to the oftentimes threatening tactics of the gun lobby and gun rights activists, we are not publishing names and will treat any communication with members of the community as confidential.