AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills responded to the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history by supporting mandated background checks on advertised gun sales and tweaks to her “yellow flag” law that has been scrutinized since the carnage.
The changes, which the Democratic governor will announce in her State of the State address on Tuesday night, are a partial embrace of gun control from a governor who has long dissuaded her party from tightening Maine’s loose gun laws. Yet a more progressive crop of top lawmakers is likely to push for farther-reaching changes that Mills may try to head off.
The biggest of the gun-related changes that Mills floated Tuesday was the one mandating background checks for all advertised gun sales. Anybody selling a gun through the classified magazine Uncle Henry’s, Facebook, Craigslist or other platforms would have to visit a gun dealer and check the buyer against the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
“For the sake of the communities, individuals and families now suffering immeasurable pain, for the sake of our state, doing nothing is not an option,” Mills will say, according to a written copy of her remarks prepared for delivery.
It all amounts to a sure sign that Maine’s gun debate has changed since the Oct. 25 shooting in which 40-year-old Army reservist Robert Card II of Bowdoin killed 18 people and injured another 13 at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston. The Army and local police have been criticized for their responses to warning signs that Card was violent and in deteriorating mental health.
The governor’s speech is both a milestone for gun control backers in Maine and a signal that they will not get all they want. Mills stopped far short of embracing the agenda of Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading national group that has called for 72-hour waiting periods and background checks on all private sales, similar to an item Maine voters rejected in 2016.
The Legislature rejected bills on both of those topics last year. Democrats who control Augusta may have the votes to get more sweeping legislation to Mills’ desk, but Republicans will be able to withhold two-thirds majorities needed to override a governor’s veto.
They did not comment on gun legislation earlier Tuesday. House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, told reporters he was awaiting the speech.
Mills’ approach on background checks would be novel. Federal law makes licensed gun dealers perform them. Maine is one of the 29 states that does not exceed that law. Of the 21 states that do, only 16 cover all gun sales. None of them limit background check mandates to advertised sales only, according to Giffords, a gun control group.
The governor also wants to toughen penalties for selling to felons or others prohibited from having guns. Mills would expand an existing law prohibiting people from “intentionally or knowingly” selling to prohibited people by adding “recklessly” and then upgrading illegal sales from a misdemeanor to a Class C felony.
Mills also floated changes to the “yellow flag” law she negotiated with the gun-rights Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine in 2019. It allows police to take weapons away from people deemed dangerous by a medical professional and a judge. Mills is proposing to allow police to take people into protective custody in limited circumstances as part of the law.
The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, which dealt with complaints about Card in the months before the shooting, has said the law did not allow them to take him into custody. Some experts have said they could have triggered the yellow flag process nonetheless. Gun control advocates have called for a stricter “red flag” law that would cut out medical professionals.
Lastly, Mills wants the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to establish an online violence and injury data hub, and she proposed a statewide network of crisis receiving centers offering care to people in mental health crises. The first new center would be in Lewiston. The only open center is in Portland and another one is set for Kennebec County.
Mills split her State of the State address into two parts Tuesday. In the morning, she released an 11-page written document outlining a short-term spending proposal and stressing economic caution over the next few years. Her in-person speech focused on the Lewiston victims and the recent storms that brought devastating floods to Maine’s coast and inland rivers.
In response to the three major storms in December and January, Mills said Tuesday she wants $5 million for a Community Resilience Partnership she established in 2021 to help towns, cities and tribal governments plan for the effects of climate change and reduce carbon emissions.
Mills also proposed $50 million for a Maine Department of Transportation program that can support culverts at risk of washout, roads prone to flooding, vulnerable coastal infrastructure and other improvements to prepare for storms. A bipartisan group of lawmakers have also pitched $50 million for a small business relief fund to help with storm recovery.
