About 10 years ago, not weeks after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, this newspaper analyzed the odds of a “wave of gun control bills” anticipated in Augusta.
“It’s not clear whether Maine lawmakers have made a political calculation to acquiesce to the pro-gun lobby,” the reporter concluded. “What is clear is that stricter gun-control bills have not gone very far in Maine, with either party in control.”
It was clear a decade ago and it is clear today.
On Monday, within days of the 377th school shooting since Columbine, opponents to even the most basic reframing of gun procurement and ownership made their case.
As if a simple background check of a person seeking to purchase a gun was a flagrant abuse of regulatory power. As if more than 20 states do not already require background checks. As if the guns used to kill 22 people in Nova Scotia in 2020 weren’t illegally purchased in Houlton.
“I can hardly believe I have to beg you for background checks,” Nicole Palmer, a Bowdoin resident and a parent, said in testimony. “I am here because inaction in the face of constant gun tragedies in this country, and in this state, is unacceptable and would be a clear violation of your duty to protect citizens.”
The current proposals for some semblance of gun control at the state level aren’t shooting for the moon – not even close.
Among those up for consideration is the proposal to institute universal background checks; another to make it a crime to knowingly provide a firearm to somebody prohibited from possessing one, and another to bring in a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases.
The waiting period is designed to reduce the number of gun-related suicides. According to analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety, the rate of death by gun suicide in Maine far exceeds the national rate. In 2020, more than 85% of Maine’s firearm deaths were suicides.
What does it say about our legislators that these overwhelmingly modest checks on lethal weapons are going to – again – face substantial challenges? How can it be that we are still mindlessly talking about “long roads” and “uphill battles”? The sustained resistance to common-sense measures like these is shameful.
When children are shot dead at school, national hand-wringing and expressions of despair tend to be channeled toward Congress. The gravity of the horror and the national nature of the outrage seems more compatible with the federal picture. It reduces logic to its lowest level: Something happened somewhere. Somebody, somewhere else, has to do something about it.
Here’s the thing: Something can happen in Maine. Even if Maine’s legislators somehow aren’t prepared to accept that, even if they wish to gesture at the possibility of unresolved public sentiment, what is stopping them from taking a preventative course of action?
Both the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and the National Rifle Association outlined opposition to the bills on legal grounds this week; a spokesman for the former said that a firearm registry could not be lawfully established and that Second Amendment protections in general “shall not be questioned.” The professional, clockwork-like frustration of rudimentary, decent and reasonable efforts at making our state a safer place for all residents requires an audacity that knows no limits.
The effect that these extremely unambitious restrictions would have on people, business or sport are negligible. Balanced against what easily accessed guns are capable of doing, one would think there would be no argument. Maine lawmakers’ fear of the consequences of failing to institute gun control should eclipse their fear of the consequences of doing it.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
