[Earlier this week, Matthews authored a lengthy Voices piece for CommonWealth laying out an argument against giving police chiefs discretion in issuing Firearm Identification Cards for rifles and shotguns. View it here.]

The Boston Globe reported this morning that compromise legislative language on the discretionary issuance of Firearms Identification Cards (FIDs) probably has enough votes to make it into Massachusetts law.

It gives police departments the ability to petition a district court to revoke a citizen’s firearms license. Under the compromise language, the Globe reports, that a court would have to base such a decision on “reliable, articulable, and credible information” that suggests one “could potentially create a risk to public safety.”

The NRA, which in its response to the compromise language sees no difference between a judge’s discretion and the police chief’s discretion, has called for its local members to oppose the bill.

The response of the Massachusetts-based Gun Owners’ Action League GOAL has been guardedly positive, with the organization likely believing a judicial process may prevent, or at least moderate, ad hoc licensing denials and revocations by police departments. And there are many positive changes for gun owners in the law. As a practical matter, it’s probably the best GOAL could have achieved.

Still, if this is signed into law, the fact still remains: In Massachusetts, the government will be able to revoke your constitutional rights under the Second Amendment.

The only difference will be 156 district court judges—appointed, not elected—and not 351 police chiefs doing the revoking.

And that judicial discretion is guided by no legislation whatsoever. What constitutes “reliable, articulable, and credible information” sufficient for an unelected judge to justify stripping away someone’s constitutional rights? Screaming at a spouse? Multiple DUIs? A pointed editorial in CommonWealth magazine?

It’s anyone’s guess. No doubt some judge somewhere can find a potential “risk to public safety” in any of that. (The way people in Massachusetts drive, just getting behind the wheel to go to work may qualify.)

In essence, discretion was merely shifted to judges from police chiefs. But in the national debate on gun rights, and with a rising judicial sea of case law strengthening those rights, this is a distinction without much of a difference. Perhaps judges stand a bit higher on the slippery legal shoreline than police chiefs, but that doesn’t stop the tide from coming in. Time will tell whether both should think about swimming lessons.

And one possible unintended consequence of the compromise: Gun-control advocates may have greased the skids for an aggrieved gun owner’s trip to federal court. Instead of first having to sue Chief Brody because he denied a gun owner’s Second Amendment rights, the gun owner can start off seeking judicial redress against Judge Goodbody!

William A. Matthews is a member of the NRA and the Gun Owners’ Action League, and an avid skeet shooter.