Gun owners have taken the first step toward putting before Massachusetts voters a proposal to repeal the firearms law signed on July 25 by Gov. Maura Healey, a statute the governor called the “most significant gun safety legislation in a decade.”

A referendum petition seeking to repeal the law was submitted to the state elections division with the signatures of 10 registered voters, the first step in a process that could land the question on the 2026 ballot.

“We started the process in filing a referendum petition to repeal the law,” Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL) Executive Director Jim Wallace said. “This is a flat-out ban on the Second Amendment regardless of what they tell people. Regardless of what you feel about guns, the law as it stands is unenforceable.”

GOAL won’t be organizing the referendum effort, a job that Wallace said will be up to a special campaign committee.

“There’s plenty of people who would be willing to step up and take care of that,” he said.

Among its many provisions, the 82-page law includes new strategies for combating untraceable “ghost guns,” expands the “red flag” law that allows a court to take guns away from someone considered a threat to themselves or others, and adds schools, polling places and government buildings to the list of areas where state law forbids people from carrying firearms.

The petitioners are seeking to repeal the law, which is known as Chapter 135 of the Acts of 2024, and a suspension of the law until the referendum question can appear on a statewide election ballot.

A spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin, who oversees the elections division, confirmed the petition’s filing and said that the Attorney General’s Office has been asked to prepare a summary for the referendum petitions. Once the petition comes back from the AG’s office, the elections division will have 14 days to provide printed petitions to the petitioners.

Petitioners will need to file 49,716 signatures if they want to suspend the law upon the filing of the petitions, and can’t suspend the law if the governor adds an emergency preamble, according to the elections division. Without suspension, they need at least 37,287 signatures to place the question on the state ballot.

Signed petitions would be due with local clerks by Oct. 9 and with the state elections division by Oct. 23. The timeframe points to a 2026 ballot question, since signed petitions would be needed by Sept. 6 to qualify a question for the 2024 ballot. Even if the signatures were filed early, local clerks, who are readying for the Sept. 3 primary elections, are not required to complete certification until mid-October.

Supporters of the bill say it builds on the state’s effective gun safety laws and marks a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which House Speaker Ron Mariano said “undermined our laws and threatened the safety of our residents.” Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem said the law was based on input from law enforcement, gun owners, community advocates and health care workers.

Days after Healey signed the bill, the Gun Owners’ Action League on Aug. 1 filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new law’s licensing regimes for firearm identification cards and licenses to carry. More lawsuits are expected.

“This law is so massive that no court will take it on all at once,” GOAL says on its website. “The law will have to be broken down in chunks by specific subject matter. This will result in several different cases being filed. GOAL has been working for months with several organizations to share the workload.”

The legislation targets ghost guns by requiring the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services to develop and maintain a real-time electronic firearms registration system and requiring that all firearms manufactured or assembled in Massachusetts be registered. It also requires all firearms to be serialized and registered, and prohibits unlicensed individuals from using 3-D printers to manufacture guns. The law also criminalizes the creation, sale or transfer of untraceable firearms, calling for sentences of 12 to 18 months.

According to Healey’s office, the new law also updates the state’s assault weapons ban by expanding the definition of assault weapons to include “known assault weapons and other weapons that function like them with respect to certain features.” It also prohibits possession, transfer, or sale of “assault-style” firearms or large-capacity feeding devices, Healey’s office says.

The new law also prohibits the issuance of a license to carry a machine gun, except for firearms instructors and bona fide collectors, and criminalizes the possession of parts that are intended to make weapons more lethal by adding them to the machine gun statute, Healey’s office said, including automatic parts, bump stocks, rapid-fire trigger activators and trigger modifiers.

Before it was signed by Gov. Healey, the measure passed the House 124-22 and the Senate 35-5, with both votes taken on July 18.

In the 2022 election, Massachusetts voters preserved another state law that was enacted in May of that year and subsequently targeted with a repeal campaign. The law made undocumented immigrants eligible to receive driver’s licenses in Massachusetts.