Maine lawmakers have approved what ABC News is calling “sweeping gun safety legislation” including a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, largely in response to last October’s mass shooting in Lewiston involving two different locations.
The Legislature also passed a ban on “bump stocks,” which ABC News incorrectly claims in its coverage “can transform a weapon into a machine gun.” Maine Public is reporting that opponents to the waiting period contended it would not have prevented the Oct. 25 shooting which left 18 people dead.
The Maine Public story quotes Nacole Palmer, head of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, a gun control advocacy group, who declared, “Maine has taken significant steps forward in preventing gun violence and protecting Maine lives.”
Backers of the waiting period bill contend it will help prevent suicides by providing a “cooling off” period so people do not impulsively purchase a firearm to harm themselves.
A gun control package had been submitted to the Legislature by Democrat Gov. Janet Mills. Her bill, according to ABC News, “would strengthen the state’s yellow flag law, boost background checks for private sales of guns and make it a crime to recklessly sell a gun to someone who is prohibited from having guns.”
The bill also expands background checks by requiring them for all private gun sales.
Mills has ten days to sign or veto the bills, or she may just allow them to become law without signing them. Odds are she will ink all of the measures.
The Guardian noted that a bill filed by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross would have created a so-called “red flag” law, which is a step above the state’s current “yellow flag” statute. There was no action on Ross’s bill.
All of this comes six months after the shooting rampage by an Army reservist who had been put in a hospital for evaluation in New York last year while on duty with his unit. Two days after the shooting, lawmen found his body inside a large container at a lot near where both shooting sites are located.
In the aftermath of the shooting, investigators learned about the hospitalization, and media reported how family members of the killer had tried to warn police about his erratic behavior.
