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Responsible gun ownership from law-abiding citizens is a deeply-rooted tradition in Maine and across the country. It is protected by both the U.S. and Maine constitutions.
State and federal law, and the courts, have also made clear that those protections do not prevent sensible and longstanding limitations on who can legally possess firearms, where they can possess them or how those firearms are sold. And when polled, strong majorities of Americans — including most gun owners — support reasonable restrictions that seek to promote gun safety while also respecting the rights of lawful gun owners.
Even as he affirmed an individual right to firearms possession in the landmark Heller decision in 2008, Justice Antonin Scalia was crystal clear that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
To us, measures like expanding background checks, strengthening the process for extreme risk protection orders (often called red or yellow flag laws), instituting waiting periods and banning bump stocks that can essentially turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons clearly fall within the category of reasonable limitations. And polls indicate that most Americans, and Mainers, agree.
Maine lawmakers are considering a proposal from Democratic Gov. Janet Mills that would apply background checks to all advertised sales, strengthen Maine’s yellow flag law and strengthen penalties for selling guns to people legally not allowed to have them. Separate bills from Democratic legislators would institute 72-hour waiting periods on gun purchases, ban bump stocks and other rapid-fire devices, create a violence prevention office and better alert the deaf community of active shooters.
As this consideration continues, lawmakers must not be deterred by false claims or false choices. They, and the governor, don’t have to choose between action to help prevent gun violence and continued respect for the Second Amendment rights of legal gun owners — both are possible regardless of what the absolutists argue.
For example, background checks, despite what some might say, are by definition not an infringement on law-abiding gun owners. If you’re not a prohibited person, you’ll pass a background check and get your gun. If you are a prohibited person, the system will prevent you from making the purchase. Or at least it should. There are still far too many loopholes in the background check system, which is why Mills’ proposal to expand it to advertised sales makes sense. By the way, this is not some totally new or leftist idea. It tracks with the bipartisan approach of the Manchin-Toomey compromise from a decade ago, which unfortunately failed in the U.S. Senate. But it had the support of Republicans like U.S. Sen. Susan Collins then, and the general approach deserves bipartisan support in the Maine Legislature now.
As Democratic state Rep. Bruce White of Waterville said previously, “law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about” in terms of the governor’s background checks proposal.
Lawmakers will be making these decisions in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Lewiston. That tragedy requires all of us to rethink our past positions and examine the law to look for ways to try to prevent future violence. Not all tragedies can be prevented, and not all specific proposals would prevent a specific tragedy. But policymakers in Augusta can use experience, common sense and a respect for constitutional rights to take balanced and needed action.
We’ll repeat something we wrote in the aftermath of the Lewiston shooting, because it remains true today: Lawmakers must use their hearts and their minds to do the obvious, and often incredibly popular, things.
