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Peter Fromuth is a board member of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition. He lives in Yarmouth with his family.
After a grim year of violence, Mainers need to ask if we have what it takes to respond to danger as a genuine community. Important tests await us in 2024: Will we let gun violence undermine the safety we prize about Maine life? What is it that we, who did not die in Lewiston or in Bowdoin, owe to those who did? As families and friends of the victims learn to live with the pain of their loss, what will we do to avoid its recurrence and spread? Are we ready to resist the scourge of violence that took their loved ones away? Tragedy in 2023 can spur life-saving reforms in 2024 only if we meet these challenges.
The Maine Gun Safety Coalition, a home-grown advocacy organization, says four measures can be a threshold to a safer Maine. These are a criminal background check for any gun buyer, to remove Maine’s role as regional supermarket for illicit purchases; a 72-hour waiting period between purchase and delivery of a firearm — a proven buffer against suicides; an extreme risk protection order, or “red flag” law, providing for temporary confiscation of a weapon from a person that a judge determines is dangerous; and a ban on the sale of assault weapons, the weapon of choice for mass shootings, causing nearly six times as many casualties per incident as a single shot rifle.
Each of these measures is associated with a reduced risk of injury or death from gun violence. None is a cure-all. Indeed, the multi-year struggle to pass any of them in other states has been sobering — change is achingly slow, and multiple mass killings appear to be a precondition for progress elsewhere.
For example, at Colorado’s Columbine High School, both weapons used in the April 1999 massacre were large magazine, semi-automatics, but the state Legislature did not ban those magazines for 14 years, not until 12 moviegoers were slain by a similar weapon in Aurora, Colorado. In Illinois, where more than 30 mass killings have taken place since 2006, the Legislature finally adopted a ban on assault weapon sales after a gunman used one to kill seven parade watchers and injure more than 40 more on the Fourth of July. After Washington suffered 10 mass killings in a period of 12 years, it finally banned the sale of assault weapons only last April when it also adopted a red-flag law and universal background checks.
Moreover, these are the success stories. By contrast, in the five years after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, Pennsylvania has not adopted any significant gun safety measure. A combined 56 children and adults died from assault weapons fire in Sutherland Springs and Uvalde, Texas. The shooter in Uvalde was 18. Yet the Texas Legislature defeated efforts to raise the age of ownership to 21 this year. And Texas and other states with weak gun laws are in the majority.
Can Maine do better? Polls say we should. National polling shows majority support for banning assault weapons. A June 2023 Pan Atlantic Research survey found four times as many Mainers supporting background checks as opposing them; a 72-hour waiting period won even stronger backing, with supporters outweighing opponents nearly five times. Majorities in gun-owning households and in all regions agreed. Respondents were not asked about a red-flag law, but since the procedural constraints of Maine’s yellow-flag law were a possible factor in the Lewiston massacre, popular backing for replacing it with a red-flag law seems likely.
How do we assure that Maine voices are heard in Augusta? We speak directly to our elected leaders. At 9 a.m. on Jan. 3, as the legislative session opens, everyday Mainers will engage in a Day of Action in the Hall of Flags at the State House. Hosted by the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, medical providers, faith leaders, students, teachers, hunters and lawmakers will raise their voices to insist that the Legislature pass these bills. One Lewiston is enough.