Maines loose gun laws come under scrutiny after deadly shootings |

The deadly shootings in Maine have brought fresh scrutiny to the relatively loose gun laws in the state, where Democratic lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to pass tougher requirements in the past year despite controlling both chambers of the legislature.

The attacks Wednesday night, which left at least 18 dead and 13 injured at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston, have also renewed attention on Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s opposition to aggressive gun-control measures during her time in office. During a news conference Thursday morning, the Democratic governor did not mention gun policy, focusing instead on the immediate need to help the city of about 38,000 people recover from the tragedy.

The nonprofit group Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Maine as 25th in the country for gun-law strength. The Giffords Law Center, another group that promotes gun control, gives it an F rating, making it one of only two states with such a low rating in New England. Maine does not require permits to carry concealed guns, nor does it mandate background checks for private gun sales.

The state also does not have red-flag laws, which allow family members or law enforcement to petition a court to temporarily prevent someone in crisis from accessing guns. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have some form of this law on the books.

In addition, Maine does not require a waiting period before gun purchases, which advocates say can give law enforcement more time to conduct accurate background checks. Eleven states have adopted this policy, including New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont.

“There’s a lot we still don’t know about the shootings, but one thing we do know is that gun laws matter,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Thoughts and prayers are not going to save lives,” he added. “Acting will. And that would include universal background checks.”

Asked Thursday about any plans for changing Maine’s gun laws, Ben Goodman, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement that her focus now is “putting the full weight of her Administration behind law enforcement’s efforts to capture the suspect, to fully understand the facts and circumstances involving last night’s tragedy, and to convey love and support to those injured and the family and friends of those lost.”

“With those facts in hand, she believes the people of Maine deserve a robust discussion about public safety at the State and Federal levels in the coming weeks,” the statement said.

On Thursday, hundreds of police officers were searching for shooting suspect Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, Maine. Investigators suspect Card may have used a legally obtained .308 rifle in the attacks, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.

Other states with higher-than-average gun ownership rates tend to be led by Republicans.

In 2019, Maine legislators passed a “yellow flag” law after a proposal for a red-flag law fell through. The law allows for the temporary removal of firearms from someone deemed as a threat to themselves or others, but it requires police involvement and a medical evaluation of the individual.

Gun-control advocates have recently failed to push stronger measures through the Maine legislature, both chambers of which are controlled by Democrats.

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In June, a bill that sought to impose a 72-hour waiting period before gun purchases was defeated in the Maine House. Under the bill, a seller who violated the waiting period would have faced a fine of $200 to $500 for a first offense and $500 to $1,000 for a repeat offense. Republicans called the bill unconstitutional and argued that very few people commit violent acts after buying a gun.

“It disrespects the rights of our constituents,” Donald Ardell, a Republican state representative, said of the measure, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Also in June, the Maine Senate rejected a measure that would have mandated background checks for private gun sales in the state, including at gun shows. The bill faced opposition from all 13 Senate Republicans and nine Senate Democrats, who argued that universal background checks would unfairly burden law-abiding gun owners.

State representative Grayson Lookner, a Democrat who supports stricter gun measures, said it’s unclear whether those bills would have prevented Wednesday’s rampage, since many details are still unknown.

Lookner said he thinks many lawmakers voted against the legislation because gun violence is relatively rare in Maine, one of the least populous states.

While there have been nearly 2,000 mass shootings reported in the United States in the past three years, only one of those had been reported in Maine before Wednesday, according to the Gun Violence Archive. (The archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are shot or killed.)

“I think a number of them somehow felt we were immune from this sort of thing,” Lookner said of his colleagues. “But we can’t have that illusion anymore.”

Maine voters in 2016 rejected a referendum measure on background checks, and Mills began her tenure in 2019 by urging Democrats not to try to pass a similar background-check bill. She has forged a politically powerful partnership with the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, a conservative-leaning hunting and fishing group that gave her an A grade in a 2022 election guide for members.

Feinblatt argued that the popularity of hunting in Maine should not impede the passage of gun-control legislation. He noted that in Minnesota, where hunting culture is also deeply ingrained, the Democratic-controlled legislature this year passed ambitious gun measures, including universal background checks and a red-flag law.

“The fact that there’s a hunting tradition and a sportsman tradition really should not be a bar to acting, because nobody’s talking about taking anyone’s guns away,” he said. “What they’re talking about is keeping citizens safer.”

In a 2022 interview with Maine Public Radio, Michael Rocque, a Bates College associate professor of sociology who studies mass shootings, said the state was simply “lucky” that high-profile mass shootings hadn’t taken place there in recent history.

“We hadn’t had one, not because we’re special or because we’re unique, not because we have these protective factors or cultures that allows us to escape those kind of attacks — but because we had been lucky,” Rocque told The Washington Post on Thursday. “And unfortunately that luck ran out.”

He said Maine has a strong independent streak, probably stemming from as far back as 1820, when Maine broke away from Massachusetts and became its own state. The Maine Constitution says every citizen “has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.”

“Mainers are proud people. The values that we have generally are that we take care of ourselves, we work hard and we don’t want people to take care of us or tell us what to do,” Rocque said. “I think that all plays into the constitution’s language and the mind-set of people that we do not want gun laws in this state.”

Rocque attributes Maine’s higher-than-average gun ownership rate to its culture of hunting and fishing, its sparse population and, for many, a rural lifestyle in which people think they “need to take things into their own hands.”

“I think that has led to a false sense of security,” he said.

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Maines loose gun laws come under scrutiny after deadly shootings

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