QUESTION 9: Guns, Safety, and Who Is Behind the Push for Change?
First, what is Question 9?
Question 9 deals with the gun law Massachusetts passed in 2024.
A Yes vote keeps that law in place. A No vote repeals it.
The law covers a lot. It regulates ghost guns and 3D-printed guns. It deals with assault style weapons and devices that can make some guns fire like machine guns. It also expands the state’s red flag law and creates more rules around gun licenses, safety, and data.
Edwards was in the Senate when the law was being worked on and passed.
She told me lawmakers were trying to keep up with technology.
“We felt, and I still feel, we were meeting the moment.”
That includes guns that can be made with 3D printers and guns without serial numbers that can be hard for law enforcement to trace.
QUESTION 8: Marijuana, Money and the Work That Is Not Finished
For years, Black communities paid a heavy price for marijuana enforcement. People were arrested. People went to jail. Families lost income. People came home with records that made it harder to get jobs, housing and other opportunities.
Then marijuana became legal.
Now there is money being made from something that once helped send people to jail.
We cannot leave that history out.
Then Edwards used another word: repair.
Vote NO on Question 3
By Jordan Berg Powers
… The Yes on 3 campaign has raised about $5.6 million, with just 15 donors supplying over $4.09 million. Executives from two of the larger private equity firms, Bain Capital and Berkshire Partners, account for over 62 cents of every dollar. In total, 22 private-equity executives gave $3.88 million. The Yes side of Question 3 has raised more than Smith and Wesson has given to rewrite our gun laws through Question 9, more than the alcohol industry and cannabis industry are spending combined opposing and supporting the Cannabis repeal question, more than all of the other questions you will be voting on this year.
QUESTION 3: Are We Opening the Primary or Watering Down the Black Vote?
Edwards agrees some of those problems are real. She disagrees with the fix.
“We agree on the problems, but we do not agree that this is the solution.”
That may be the most important line from our conversation.
We can agree the system needs work and still ask if this is the right way to fix it.
For me, the question is simple:
Will Question 3 bring more Black voters into the process and give us more power, or will the larger voting pool grow faster and water down the political power we already have?
Blue Hill Ave: Hear Us Before You Build It!
Worrell was at the latest community meeting at Morning Star Baptist Church. His one word to describe it was “passionate.” But the meeting ended with people still waiting for their chance to speak.
“There was still a long list of community members that was left unheard.”
Boston City Councilor Brian Worrell
The PEOPLE, the Process and Policy … Accountability in Action
All three matter. Asking questions when they do not line up is not creating division; it’s creating the process, based on the people being valued in the process while creating the policy.
