LEWISTON, Maine — U.S. Rep. Jared Golden got the attention of constituents, pundits and peers in the wake of Wednesday’s mass shootings in his hometown of Lewiston when he called on Congress to pass a ban on assault-style weapons.
Golden, a Democrat and Marine veteran who previously opposed such bans, put together his remarks Thursday during a car ride to Lewiston after flying that afternoon from Washington, D.C., to Boston. That evening, he stepped to the podium at a news conference also featuring U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Nearly 24 hours had passed since a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 at a bowling alley and bar in Maine’s second-largest city.
Golden, who has been one of the most conservative House Democrats on a variety of issues, represents Maine’s 2nd District, which President Donald Trump carried in 2016 and 2020. He’s seeking a fourth term in 2024.
A few hours before he was set to attend a vigil, Golden sat down with the Bangor Daily News on Sunday in his Lewiston District Office to discuss how and why he changed his mind on banning the type of weapon the gunman used Wednesday.
Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.
That Thursday press conference was nearly 24 hours after the shootings. What was that period like leading up to the press conference, and what did you think about between Wednesday night and Thursday?
Golden: So Wednesday night, I think we got informed pretty quickly, which is not the norm as an elected official all the way in Washington. It’s not like we get a phone call every time there’s a shooting. So I took it pretty seriously pretty quickly that something must be up, and I probably knew pretty quickly that it had been designated as an active shooter scenario. The bowling alley is about a half mile from my house. It was also running through my mind that this was a guy on the run who could easily be in my own neighborhood, and [while] taking phone calls from my staff or others was also, in between, trying to call my wife, who didn’t answer for almost two hours. That definitely shook me up. My rational self said they’re fine, but you couldn’t rule it out.
I did not turn to any thoughts of what happened, why, what’s to blame, policy-type things until Thursday evening. I just knew I’m going to have to say something here to my constituents and my own neighbors. It was clear to me the issue of firearms is going to come up. Ultimately, I wrote my remarks [in a car] somewhere between Portland and Lewiston. It didn’t take that long.
When you were drafting the remarks, did you have an initial plan, and did it change at all?
Golden: No, I started writing them and wrote what I wrote.
Was your staff surprised at all?
Golden: You’d have to ask them, but none of them would ever go on the record about themselves. I’ll just tell you some of the questions I asked myself and how I answered them. I, in looking at the photos of the shooter and as someone who served in the Marine Corps infantry, instantly knew that’s a guy who is holding the rifle appropriately, and he’s familiar with it. But most unsettling was his posture — slightly bent knees, walking heel to toe, we call it. That’s a trained maneuver for shooting with stability while moving, and I quickly recognized that this was very much one of the worst-case scenarios you could imagine, a trained individual who’s familiar with the firearm he’s using and clearly [had] gone crazy. That got me thinking about a lot of the things that I’ve often said to myself. I am a gun owner. I carry firearms for protection.
I feel like everything has to be perfect for you to successfully be able to stop a shooter with that kind of outmatch between what you have and what they have. And so the question I found myself asking for the first time was, can I really go on telling myself that I believe if I were the guy with a handgun in any public place trying to stop the guy with the AR-15, that it doesn’t matter what type of firearm he has? Those details started to play through my mind in a very real way for the first time in a long time and just led me to realize, I’ve been kidding myself. The next thing that came to mind for me was, OK, I know that this can now happen in my community. It can happen anywhere else. What’s the solution for a guy like me who wants to protect his family? Am I now going to live in a society where we walk around with AR-15s everywhere we go? Maybe the simplest answer is we just get rid of the things. It just seems very simply clear to me to say, if we ban these, stop their future sale and come up with some kind of system for regulating the possession of those that exist, that seems like the highest prospects for making a difference.
Some might say, why did you take until now? Why didn’t you, after Uvalde, Texas, for example, make a similar switch?
Golden: It’s a very fair question and criticism, which I accept. I hope I made clear with my remarks Thursday night I’m not going to divert blame or deflect it in any way. I think the simple answer is, it’s easy to feel shielded from that happening in your own life and in your own community, and it’s easy to go on justifying your own personal positions or even your own possession of these firearms under the assumption of, well, I’m going to protect my people. But when something like this happens, that kind of humility I talked about is a pretty harsh lesson. Looking at the reality of a well-trained man with a firearm that he knows intimately, that’s efficient and effective at killing, do we feel like with our little handguns that we know for sure we can make the difference? And if not, are we wanting the never-ending escalation of bigger and badder guns being carried by all of us everywhere we go out of necessity? I can tell you the nexus of that with my military service in Afghanistan and Iraq is that is a crazy way to live, and it’s definitely not what we want in our communities.
Have you heard from Sen. Collins since Thursday?
Golden: No.
Do you think you caught her off guard?
Golden: This is the town that I live in, and it’s my community. But also, I’ve always been someone who believes that every individual elected official has a very personal responsibility. And it’s individual. This is the heart of a lot of the times I have broken away from the Democratic Party and opposed my own leadership. I have respect for that as well when thinking about the decisions of my colleagues, like Sen. Collins or Sen. King or Rep. Pingree, but I don’t alter my decisions. I’m going to do what I think is right.
How do you think this affects your reelection chances? Did you give any thought to that in what you said Thursday?
Golden: There are certain times in life when you have to say, this is so much bigger than any other consideration that it’s not even worth giving much thought to. And this was one of those moments for me. I don’t know whether or not this means that I cannot get reelected. I also don’t know if in the same way that this changed my life and my perspective in a heartbeat, is that true of other people in the community here in Lewiston but also in the communities surrounding and possibly across the state? Maybe. That question lies out there in the future.
What about criticism from your left that this was coming too late? I know you touched on this earlier.
Golden: Well, that won’t bring anyone back, will it. There’s only tomorrow.
Did you personally know any victims?
Golden: I don’t think there’s a single person in this small town who doesn’t recognize some of those faces or know them through some secondary source, if not a direct one. I don’t know any of them on a deeply personal level, but I certainly know of many of them and have seen them about this community through the years.
What specific legislation do you think now should come at the federal and state level?
Golden: You know, I’m super nuanced, so when it comes to the details of what goes into the perfect piece of legislation, I don’t know the answer to that yet. I don’t see much prospects for (an assault-style weapons ban) moving through the House of Representatives in 2023 or 2024. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to work towards it. I think it is very much within the reach of the Maine Legislature. The votes are there potentially. I believe it can be accomplished there and I will play a role in that.