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AUGUSTA, Maine — Only 15 of Maine’s 185 state lawmakers responded to a Bangor Daily News survey on how they would use their influence to make reforms following the deadliest mass shooting in state history.
Maine is the rare kind of liberal-leaning state with loose gun laws and a high rate of gun ownership. The Legislature has historically rejected gun control measures, doing so as recently as earlier this year. But the Democrats who lead Augusta seem ready to advance them in 2024.
The scant responses to the survey show the sensitivity of the conversations, especially among a bloc of centrist Democrats that has joined with Republicans to block gun control in the past. Some progressives have outlined a desire for changes such as background check expansions and waiting periods, while Republicans argued against gun measures and for mental health reforms.
“I need help from all the sides to approach it the right way so that something gets done, and it’s not another thing that just gets a lot of talk,” said Rep. Ron Russell, D-Verona Island, who represents a swing district along Penobscot Bay.
Leroy Walker, a Republican city councilor in Auburn whose son, Joseph, died in the Oct. 25 shooting, called out GOP lawmakers and said their responses focused on mental health are “prolonging what needs to be done to slow these weapons down.”
“If they weren’t under a rock, they should know that something needed to happen a long time ago,” Walker said, adding he supports the Second Amendment but wants to see waiting periods for firearm purchases, a “red flag” law in Maine and limits on guns that can “rapidly fire.”
Other shootings have led to sweeping reforms. A decade ago, Connecticut lawmakers banned dozens of weapons and large-capacity magazines after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Florida’s Republican governor enacted a “red flag” law that allows police to ask courts to seize firearms from dangerous people just weeks after a 2018 school shooting.
The Lewiston shooting, in which 40-year-old Army reservist Robert R. Card II of Bowdoin killed 18 people and injured 13 more at a bowling alley and bar, upended Maine’s gun conversation. The next day, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat who opposed gun control, backed a ban on so-called assault weapons like the one Card used in a candid and shocking reversal.
Card was delusional for months ahead of the shooting, according to police documents. After being informed of a violent episode on an Army reserve detail in New York that led to his hospitalization, local police drew criticism from experts for not triggering a Maine law aimed at taking guns from dangerous people. His brain is being studied for military injuries.
The shooting has led to a wide range of proposed solutions from lawmakers. Gov. Janet Mills, another Democrat long skeptical of gun control, has called vaguely for consensus action on guns and has convened staff meetings with the gun-rights Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and progressive lawmakers including House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland.
The agenda for gun control proponents is clear. The Maine Gun Safety Coalition wants an assault-style weapons ban, a red flag law, expanded background checks on private gun sales and 72-hour waiting periods before gun purchases. Those changes, along with magazine limits, were cited most by the 11 Democrats who answered the BDN survey.
“We have been trying to make thoughtful changes to firearm laws for many years and the tragedy in Lewiston has added new urgency to this work,” wrote Rep. Vicki Doudera, D-Camden, who co-chairs the Legislature’s informal Gun Safety Caucus.
Three Republicans who responded — Reps. David Boyer of Poland, Robert Nutting of Oakland, and Austin Theriault of Fort Kent — said changes to gun laws were unnecessary, focusing instead on longstanding issues in Maine’s mental health system. One bill floated by a conservative lawmaker after the shooting would have repealed certain regulations on inpatient and outpatient mental health care providers, trying to incentivize more to open.
“I think that it is clear from the lack of beds in treatment facilities, the wait lists for treatment, and the numbers of homeless people who suffer from mental illnesses that we need to increase the funding for those issues or use a different approach to getting help to these individuals,” Nutting wrote in response to the survey.
Four members — two Democrats and two Republicans — said the Legislature should conduct its own investigation of the shooting. Others said it would be unwise to risk interfering with the Mills-approved probe. That commission has voted to ask lawmakers for subpoena power, something lawmakers are likely to grant early next year.
But the lack of responses showed some of the centrist Democrats in wait-and-see mode, particularly those who voted along with Russell to oppose 72-hour waiting periods and a background check expansion earlier in the year.
“There are good, smart people working on these issues and I plan to wait and see what comes out of those discussions, especially in light of what has happened,” Rep. Allison Hepler, D-Woolwich, who also opposed those measures, wrote in an email.
BDN writer Billy Kobin contributed to this report.
