Maine Passes Gun Control Legislation Following Lewiston Mass Shooting

Senate President Troy Jackson (D-Allagash), left, confers with Senate Majority Leader Eloise Vitelli (D-Arrowsic), Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harold "Trey" Stewart (R-Presque Isle), and Assistant Senate Minority Leader Sen. Lisa Keim (R-Dixfield), in front of the rostrum during a break in the morning session at the Maine State House in Augusta, Maine on April 17, 2024. (Joe Phelan/The Kennebec Journal via AP)

The Maine Legislature passed sweeping gun control legislation, including background checks on private gun sales, waiting periods for gun purchases, and criminalizing gun sales to prohibited people on Thursday.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and the Democratic-led Legislature pushed for a number of gun and mental health proposals following the state’s deadliest shooting that left 18 dead and 13 others injured about six months ago in Lewiston.

Most of the proposals were adopted despite the state’s strong hunting tradition and high gun ownership.

“We heard loud and clear from Mainers across our state that they wanted meaningful action to make our communities safer from violence, and I’m so proud that we had the courage to take meaningful steps that will get us closer to making that a reality,” the House assistant majority leader, Rep. Kristen Cloutier, a Democrat from Lewiston, said Thursday in a statement.

The governor is expected to sign her bill that aims to strengthen the state’s yellow flag law, increase background checks for private party sales, and make it a crime to sell a gun to someone who is prohibited from having guns, said Ben Goodman, a spokesman for the governor.

The bill also directs funding toward violence prevention initiatives and the opening of a mental health crisis center in Lewiston.

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Mr. Goodman said the governor would review two additional bills that narrowly cleared the Senate on Wednesday.

The first one, known as LD 2238, would establish a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases.

A waiting period does nothing to address the “festering wound that is mental health here in Maine,” said Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, Maine Public reported.

“Let’s not fool ourselves,” she reportedly said. “This bill didn’t pass last session because Maine people did not want it and here we are doing the same thing over again. Nothing has changed, Madame Speaker. Maine people do not want 72-hour waiting periods.”

The other bill, known as LD 2086, would ban so-called bump stocks and other mechanical or electrical devices used to make semi-automatic guns operate more like fully automatic firearms.

Democratic House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross’s bill to initiate a red flag law never made it to the floor. The bill would have allowed family members to petition a judge to have guns removed from someone who is in a psychiatric crisis. The state’s current yellow flag puts law enforcement in charge of the process, which critics say is too complicated.

11th-hour Drama

Lawmakers worked through the night and into the morning as they neared their Wednesday adjournment date, but not without some 11th-hour drama.

They had to approve a contentious supplemental budget before casting their final votes. The session finally wrapped after daybreak.

Family members warned police about the Army reservist in Lewiston who went on a killing rampage on Oct. 25, 2023.

A man walks by flowers and a sign of support for the community in the wake of this week's mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, on Oct. 28, 2023. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

The shooter had been hospitalized for two weeks while training with his unit, and his best friend, also a reservist, warned that he believed the man was going to “snap and do a mass shooting.”  The shooter committed suicide after the attack.

Survivors of the attack were mixed on the proposed legislation.

Ben Dyer, who was shot five times during the October incident, was skeptical that lawmakers were using a tragedy to fulfill their agendas.

“A sick person did a sick thing that day,” Mr. Dyer said. “And the Legislature and politicians are trying to capitalize on that to get their agendas passed,” said Mr. Dyer, who contends law-abiding gun owners are the ones who would get hurt by the proposals while criminals ignore them.

The state already had a yellow flag law, but law enforcement officials didn’t use it to prevent the tragedy, he added.

Pro-gun supporters protest at a gun safety rally at the State House in Augusta, Maine, on Jan. 3, 2024. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

Republicans echoed the shooting survivor’s view and accused Democrats of using the tragic event to appeal to people’s emotions to pass contentious legislation.

“My big concern here is that we’re moving forward with gun legislation that has always been on the agenda. Now we’re using the tragedy in Lewiston to force it through when there’s nothing new here,” Republican Sen. Lisa Keim said. “It’s the same old ideas that were rejected year after year.”

But Democrats claimed their constituents called on them to do something to prevent future attacks. They argued it would have been an abdication of duty to ignore their pleas.

“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,” Ms. Mills, a former prosecutor and attorney general, said during her State of the State address in late January.