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With passage of three gun safety bills, Maine lawmakers have approved what could be the most significant strengthening of state firearm laws in decades. These bills, a response to an October mass shooting in Lewiston, should become law.
The centerpiece of the recently passed legislation is a bill proposed and championed by Gov. Janet Mills. In the wake of the horrific Oct. 25 shooting that left 18 people dead and 13 injured, the governor deserves a lot of credit for openly reassessing her opposition to some past efforts to tighten Maine’s gun laws.
Her bill would extend background checks to all advertised gun sales, essentially closing a loophole that has allowed some gun purchases to skirt the review process that has stopped sales to convicted felons, domestic violence perpetrators and hundreds of others in Maine who are prohibited from making such purchases. The governor’s successful bill also includes support for additional mental health and substance use stabilization services and modest changes to Maine’s yellow flag risk protection order law, which can help address concerns raised after the Lewiston shooting.
A bill to create a stronger extreme risk protection order law, a red flag law, stalled in the final days of the legislative session.
In addition to the governor’s bill, Democratic lawmakers passed legislation to require a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases and a bill that would require that guns forfeited to law enforcement agencies be destroyed rather than sold, which was amended to also ban bump stocks.
While we understand concerns about some of the technicalities of these bills, we believe they are reasonable restrictions that seek to promote gun safety while also respecting the rights of lawful gun owners. All three bills should become law.
Waiting periods, which are in effect in 12 other states, including Vermont and Florida, and under consideration in others, have been shown to reduce gun homicides and suicides. For example, a 2017 study found a 17 percent drop in homicide deaths and a 7 percent to 11 percent drop in deaths by suicide when gun purchase waiting periods were in place.
Studies have suggested waiting periods can lower intimate partner gun homicide rates. Gun rights advocates have argued waiting periods could delay a domestic violence victim in getting self-protection, but little empirical evidence for that exists, Bangor Daily News reporter Billy Kobin wrote last month.
In fact, access to guns increases the risk of domestic abuse. For example, an abusive partner’s access to firearms makes it five times more likely that a victim of domestic abuse will be killed, and domestic violence assaults involving a gun are 12 times more likely to result in death than those assaults involving other weapons or bodily force, Francine Garland Stark of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence told members of the Judiciary Committee in March in testimony in support of the waiting period bill.
“Implementation of a 72-hour waiting period on the purchasing of a firearm would reduce the likelihood of impulsive acts of lethal violence,” she testified.
Reporting by the BDN’s Maine Focus team brought to light the fact that some law enforcement agencies sell firearms that have been forfeited to them. These guns can, and have, later been recovered by police in other states. Destroying them, as some police departments in Maine and other states already do, simply makes sense. Which is why we generally supported LD 2086, despite process concerns about complicating the bill with an amendment to ban bump stocks.
The gun safety bills passed by lawmakers this session, notably the governor’s legislation, are a significant step forward for Maine. They all should become law.
