I left the Boston, MA area in 1993 and gun laws were oppressive then. Have things gotten any better?

Sheep wanting to protect themselves? What a concept.

Do you blame them?

As someone who is currently in the application process I can say that it is definitely still a bit of a hassle. I called in the beginning of January to schedule an appointment to apply and was told the next available appointment was 6 April. I asked if they could check again and they found one for 29 February. First off, 3 months just to apply is absolutely ridiculous, and even the month and a half to apply was ridiculous as well. Actually applying wasn't too bad, the officer I dealt with was great and even charged me $25 instead of $100 for the application and waived the range qualification requirement because I'm in the service. However, initially I was told it would take just over the minimum of 40 days processing to get my LTC. 45 days later I called and was rudely told that it would be closer to 90 days and hung up on. On top of it taking absolutely forever (4.5 months start to finish) to get it, I will probably still get restrictions (hunting, target, etc.) despite thousands of hours of weapons training and being in the military, defeating the whole purpose of an LTC. The worst part about this is that in some towns it is 10x worse than this and the police department can just flat out refuse to give it to anyone. Gotta love Massachusetts...