Samantha Bailey was heading home to Manchester, N.H., after visiting her boyfriend in Massachusetts last November, when, while reaching for her water bottle, she rear-ended another vehicle.
That decision has haunted her since.
The crash totaled her car and caused injuries, Bailey recalled in court documents and an interview with the Globe. Before going to the hospital, officers asked if the then-24-year-old had valuables in the vehicle. Her loaded 9mm handgun was holstered in the car’s center console, she told them.
But when Bailey later went to a police station, she received shocking news: She was charged for carrying a firearm without a Massachusetts license — a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 18 months in the state’s House of Corrections.
“I literally was just reaching for a water bottle … and now I feel like I’m fighting for my life,” said Bailey, who is navigating court proceedings 11 months later.
Bailey is one of several defendants facing similar charges, anxiously waiting for Massachusetts’ high court to decide whether out-of-state visitors can be charged with unlawfully carrying firearms when they can legally possess the same guns back home.
The cases are seen as an uphill battle to further roll back gun licensing requirements after a landmark 2022 US Supreme Court decision sharply limited government’s power to regulate firearms, leaving Massachusetts and other states grappling with how to maintain gun safety regimes. They’ve drawn national attention from Second Amendment and gun violence prevention groups arguing whether Massachusetts, a state priding itself on low gun violence rates, can impose strict restrictions on out-of-state residents without violating the Constitution.
The recent court hearings come as a new, wide-ranging bill to shore up Massachusetts gun laws following the Supreme Court ruling, known as Bruen, faces separate legal challenges and efforts to place it on the 2026 ballot.
The pair of cases, which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard jointly, involve New Hampshire gun owners challenging the state’s authority to enforce licensing requirements for out-of-state residents.
In New Hampshire, qualified gun owners can carry firearms openly or concealed without a license. In Massachusetts, visitors for years have undergone lengthy processes to get “non-resident temporary licenses.” Those without one, who don’t fall under certain exemptions, could face charges if caught carrying a gun. While many states recognize other states’ firearms licenses, Massachusetts does not.
Both cases before the SJC involve New Hampshire residents driving here with legally-owned guns in the car. In 2021, Massachusetts police arrested Dean Donnell “on suspicion of drunk driving” after a car crash on Interstate 495 near the Lowell Connector, according to court documents. Upon searching his car, officers found a loaded firearm in an “unsecured duffle bag in the back seat.”
The other defendant, Philip Marquis, got into an accident on I-495 in Lowell, in 2022 while traveling from his New Hampshire home to work in Massachusetts. When officers arrived, he informed them he had an unloaded pistol that he didn’t have a Massachusetts license to carry.
Both were charged for carrying firearms without Massachusetts permits.
Massachusetts officials say the state’s strict licensing requirements are necessary to protect residents by ensuring anyone carrying firearms meet state standards. But some New Hampshire gun owners say they’ve been caught off guard by how small moves across state lines can yield serious legal penalties.
The SJC took on the case after a Lowell District Court judge, John Coffey, dismissed the charges against Donnell and Marquis, saying their actions were protected by the Second Amendment.
That ruling, if upheld, could help gun rights proponents challenge state licensing requirements elsewhere, legal experts said. One implication could be “any state that has a concealed carry licensing process would have to recognize a permit that are issued certainly by sort of geographically contiguous states and maybe even broader than that,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law in North Carolina.
Appearing before the SJC last month, Ryan Rall, a prosecutor with the Middlesex district attorney’s office, argued the charges against the N.H. gun owners should stand in part because the defendants didn’t try to obtain nonresident licenses. The defendants’ lawyers, meanwhile, said their Second Amendment rights supersede individual state laws, and the SJC should take into consideration that the defendants didn’t know they were violating Massachusetts law.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire’s top law enforcement officials also sparred over the cases. John Formella, the New Hampshire attorney general, submitted an amicus brief arguing Massachusetts’ licensing requirements “imposes something of a Hobbesian choice” to New Hampshire residents: “lay down your right to armed self-defense upon entry into Massachusetts or face felony charges that carry harsh penalties and mandatory imprisonment.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, meanwhile, argued the Second Amendment does not stop the state “from ensuring, through licensure, that individuals who carry firearms within its borders are ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.’”
“Massachusetts applies its laws evenly to residents and non-residents alike,” she said in a statement to the Globe. “Nothing in the Constitution prohibits Massachusetts law enforcement officers from enforcing state law within its own borders, simply because someone is from a different state.”
The cases attracted national attention, with national groups submitting briefs in favor of one side or the other, a sign of how the SJC’s decision could have wide-reaching effects on firearm laws nationally.
Organizations, including the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America, argued Massachusetts’ stricter licensing requirements for nonresidents aren’t supported by recent Supreme Court rulings on what the Second Amendment allows.
“States need to respect the complete Bill of Rights; just like we cannot regulate what people say, we cannot regulate what tools people choose to have to carry to protect themselves,” said JR Hoell, a New Hampshire state representative with the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition.
Gun violence prevention groups, meanwhile, point to Massachusetts’ low gun violence rates, arguing Massachusetts should be allowed to maintain stricter licensing requirements. They’ve said gun owners are responsible for knowing firearm laws when they travel.
“The Second Amendment has always coexisted alongside state regulation, and residents of different states have always had to follow the laws of the states that they go to,” said Billy Clark, a litigation attorney for the Giffords Law Center, a national gun violence prevention group. “We don’t think that gun laws need to be treated any differently.”
Cody Jacobs, a law professor at Boston University who previously worked for Giffords, said the many briefs submitted by gun rights groups “shows the resources that they have, to reach out even in these sort of long-shot arguments,” and their involvement represented “a good warning of what’s ahead within the post-Bruen landscape, which is continuing litigation over pretty much every gun law.”
The Massachusetts gun legislation passed in July, which included measures regulating ghost guns and updating red flag laws, is facing its own legal challenges over provisions dealing with licensing and training requirements.
For New Hampshire residents caught in the crosshairs of the interstate dispute, how the judges decide is more personal than the debate playing out at the SJC.
Bailey said her decision to obtain a gun was not taken lightly: A survivor of domestic violence who lives alone, she was alarmed by stories she read of attacks on hikers and bought a gun in 2022 to protect herself. She said she passed a background check and took a firearm course in New Hampshire.
Since the incident, Bailey said she put her plans to apply for nursing school on hold while routinely returning to Massachusetts for court appearances.
“Everything was nerve-wracking — you feel like you’re put on a podium and that your life is being looked at through a fine glass,” she said. “I just want to move on with my life, and I want to be able to feel safe again.”
Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.