Peter Hamm, of the Brady Campaign, in the comments suggested it was so, and quoted this section of law. That section would appear to make furnishing a machine gun to anyone under 21 years of age criminal. The law makes exceptions for rifles and shotguns, but not for machine guns.
I’ll be honest, I’m not an expert on Massachusetts gun laws. They are monsterously complicated. But I will try to find out from an expert whether there’s an exception that’s being overlooked, or whether the definition of “furnish” is something the courts already define. I’ll be honest, I don’t know.
I do find it odd, though, that some lawmaker would suggest that anyone 18 to 21 weren’t mature enough to handle an automatic weapon, when most of the automatic weapons in use today are wielded by those 18 to 21 when in military service.
UPDATE: Article here. One other note:
On Monday, Bizilj told The Boston Globe he was about 10 feet behind his son and reaching for his camera when the weapon fired. He said his family avoided larger weapons, but he let his son try the Uzi because it’s a small weapon with little recoil. The family did not return messages for comment Tuesday.
Bizilj is pretty clearly not all that familiar with firearms or Newton’s laws of motion. A bigger machine gun would have actually been better, because recoil is not a function of the size of the gun. A Micro Uzi has far more recoil than belt fed heavy machine gun because the Uzi has less mass to absorb the equal and opposite reaction of the bullet being fired out of the barrel. I believe the boy’s father can probably get away with pleading ignorance, but there are a lot of questions the instructor needs to answer.
UPDATE: Asking an attorney who’s familiar with Massachusetts firearms law, this section could be a real problem for people who run the shoot if the District Attorney tries to proceed with charges. The law is the law, and if you’re going to run something like a machine gun shoot, you need to know what it is, in intimate detail.
