Gun safety bill from Gov. Mills gets green light from full Maine Legislature

The multipronged gun safety bill proposed by Gov. Janet Mills in response to the Oct. 25 mass shooting in Lewiston has now been  passed by the Maine Legislature. 

Following the 19-15 vote from the Senate on Friday, the House also supported the bill with a 73-66 vote on Monday. Democrats in the Senate were divided on the measure, while no Republicans voted in support.

Those were just initial votes, however, so the bill will need another vote in each chamber before heading to Mills’ desk. 

The House did not take up the other gun bills the Senate approved Friday, including a 72-hour waiting period for certain purchases and an update to Maine’s definition of a machine gun. 

The bill the chamber did take up, LD 2224, seeks to strengthen Maine’s yellow flag law, which is the state’s current mechanism to temporarily confiscate firearms from someone who is deemed a danger to themself or others. It would also require background checks for private sales of firearms and make it easier to prosecute anyone who sells a gun to someone not allowed to have one.

The bill would also create a way to better gather data about violence-related injuries and deaths to help identify patterns. And to address mental health, the proposal would establish a statewide network of crisis receiving centers, starting in Lewiston, to help someone in crisis receive prompt care. 

“Violence is not a simple problem,” said Rep. Matt Moonen (D-Portland). And while there’s not one measure that can address it completely, he added that this bill “represents meaningful progress without trampling on anyone’s rights.”

Rep. Kristen Cloutier (D-Lewiston) said her hometown was shattered last October when the state’s deadliest mass shooting left 18 people dead and injured 13 more. There are scars that will never heal, she said, and she’s reminded every day of the ripple effect such violence can have. 

Because of that, she said lawmakers “have the ability and the responsibility to take meaningful action” to help prevent similar tragedies in the future. 

“This legislation before us is that meaningful action,” she said of the bill. 

Other proponents on the House floor spoke to the bill’s ability to close a loophole in Maine’s background check law by requiring checks for all advertised sales, without requiring universal background checks — which Mainers narrowly voted down in a 2016 referendum. 

Though there’s no guarantee of preventing mass shootings in the future, said Rep. Steve Moriarty (D-Cumberland), the bill does enhance public safety and welfare. He and Rep. Adam Lee (D-Auburn) read excerpts from various federal and state Supreme Court cases to speak to the legality of the measure. 

Lee believes it’s important to protect Second Amendment rights, but said “they are not absolute.”

However, critics of the bill see it as an infringement on that right and, as Rep. Donald Ardell (R-Monticello) put it, “a step toward tyranny.”

As a former federal firearm licensee, Ardell said people who won’t pass a background check don’t subject themselves to them, so the proposal will only further burden law-abiding citizens. 

Civil action bill

After previously supporting the measure, the House on Monday narrowly joined the Senate in voting down a proposal that would allow someone to bring a civil action against firearms manufacturers. Members voted 71-69 to withdraw support and concur with the Senate. 

Rep. Jennifer Poirier (R-Skowhegan) made the motion to join the Senate in not supporting the bill out of fear that it would cause gun manufacturers to move out of the state and put Mainers out of work. 

Four Democrats joined Republicans in voting to withdraw their support of the bill.