With the stroke of her pen, the Governor of Massachusetts has foreclosed an effort by gun-rights advocates to block the state’s new omnibus gun-control law.

More than two months after signing H.4885 into law, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey (D.) on Wednesday issued an “emergency preamble” to the measure by unilateral executive action. The move puts the wide-ranging law into effect immediately rather than its original effective date of October 23. It also preempts an ongoing grassroots campaign led by a Massachusetts gun store owner to collect enough signatures to prevent the law from taking effect at all.

“This gun safety law bans ghost guns, strengthens the Extreme Risk Protection Order statute to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others, and invests in violence prevention programs,” Healey said of her decision in a statement. “It is important that these measures go into effect without delay.”

Healey’s invocation of an emergency preamble, a power given to her by the Massachusetts Constitution for situations when “the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety or convenience requires that such law should take effect forthwith,” arrives as a group of activists dubbed the Civil Rights Coalition were nearing an October 9 deadline to counteract the law. They would have needed to submit 49,716 signatures from registered voters to suspend the law and put its fate to voters in the 2026 elections. Now, that avenue for combatting the law is officially off the table for gun-rights advocates.

Toby Leary, owner of Cape Cod Gun Works and Chairman of the Civil Rights Coalition, argued that Healey is “undermining democracy.”

“If this were truly a public health emergency, she would have enacted the preamble when the bill was signed back in July,” he said in a statement posted on social media. “Now that we are close to gathering the signatures needed to suspend the law for two years, she’s invoking an emergency preamble to sidestep the will of the people. She’s acting more like a dictator than a governor.”

The 116-page law marked the culmination of nearly a year-long effort by gun-control advocates in the state to mount a legislative response to the Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, which effectively ended the state’s old gun-carry permitting regime. The measure did much more than regulate gun carry, though. In addition to creating new “prohibited areas” to block licensed concealed carry and instituting new licensing and training requirements for persons seeking gun permits, it also banned unserialized firearms, expanded the state’s already extensive prohibition on so-called assault weapons, and dramatically expanded the categories of people eligible to initiate the state’s “red flag” law, among other things.

The Civil Rights Coalition did not tell The Reload how many signatures the effort had gathered prior to the Governor’s executive action, only that they anticipated gathering enough by next week’s deadline to suspend H.4885. The group claims to have engaged with over 85,000 residents on the repeal effort.

Holly Robichaud, a spokesperson for the coalition, told The Reload that despite the law going into effect, an effort to collect signatures to place a question before voters in 2026 asking them to repeal the law “is still well underway.”

Even before the repeal effort, H.4885’s ambitious overhaul of the state’s gun laws created headaches for state officials. The Massachusetts legislature was forced last month to quietly delay implementation of the law’s new training requirements for licensed gun owners for 18 months to prevent all firearms licensing for new gun owners from halting until the head of the state police crafted a certified training curriculum—a new mandate created by the law.

The National Rifle Association and its Massachusetts affiliate, the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), immediately pledged to sue the state over the law. GOAL added Wednesday that it also planned to challenge Healey’s executive action and seek an injunction on enforcement of the law.

In the meantime, gun-rights advocates in the state said the legal uncertainty created by the law’s expansive and opaque new requirements will wreak havoc on lawful gun commerce.

“As a store owner, I’m faced with two choices—break the law to stay open or stop selling guns and close my business,” Leary said. “After a decade of hard work, my state government is trying to destroy my business’s future.”

Governor Healey’s office did not respond to requests for additional comment.