Let me get this straight. The gun owners lobby wants more centralized government control over the issuance and tracking of firearm licenses? Apparently so, and Kerry Healey is playing right into their game.

The system of police chiefs' granting firearm licenses isn't perfect, but it does operate on the assumption of local knowledge of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. That often means that people who want guns don't get them, hence the gun lobby objections.

But it also means scattered and disorganized tracking of gun licenses in the state, something the Second Amendment folks generally see as a good thing.

So I'm not sure what's happening here, but I do know that if Healy is pro-gun lobby it's going to be tough to reconcile that with an anti-violenct crime position.