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Opinion: Why a waiting period matters

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Opinion: Why a waiting period matters

Jun 22, 2022 | 8:50 am ET
By Ethan Strimling
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Opinion: Why a waiting period matters

Opinion: Why a waiting period matters
When I was at the polls last week gathering signatures for a new slate of progressive referenda, one of the poll workers came up to me and asked if I remembered her. I said “Of course! You worked at Preble Street for decades.” 

She then asked, “But, do you remember the first two times we met?” I asked her to remind me.

The first time, she told me, was when I chaired the Criminal Justice Committee as a state senator and she wanted me to advocate for Dennis Dechaine to get a new trial. I did recall that meeting, but not that she was there.

When she reminded me of our second meeting, however, a flood of emotions came back. It was when she testified on a bill I co-sponsored to create a ten-day waiting period for the purchase of a firearm in Maine. 

Her grandson was a good kid. Tough parents, but a hard worker. Sweet as could be. He had some mental health issues, and depression sometimes ran through him like it would never leave. He tried to shake it every way a teenager could figure out, and he had people around him who saw the signs and tried to help him find peace. But nothing worked, and when a bout of depression came on, it was impossible for anyone in the family to find a way into his heart.

At 18, he walked into an Auburn Walmart on a Thursday, bought a rifle,  and killed himself with it on Sunday. 

All too often in our debate about guns, we lose sight of the loss of life from successful suicides caused by our lax gun laws. Over half of gun deaths in America are suicides, and the leading cause of successful suicides is with a gun—more than drowning, jumping, pills or any of the myriad ways people use to end their temporary pain. 

And “temporary pain” is the important piece of understanding how lax gun laws contribute to suicide. Study after study has shown that if you can prevent success during the first attempt, you have a much greater chance of keeping that individual person alive. And the best way to prevent that initial success, is to keep guns out of the hand of the one who is suicidal.

A recent study showed that the odds of successful suicide are 140 times greater when a gun is used. The author of the study Dr. J. Michael Bostwick said that most suicide attempts are “impulsive acts, and it’s critical to prevent access to tools that make impulsive attempts more deadly.” He added, “Suicide attempters often have second thoughts, but when a method like a gun works so effectively, there’s no opportunity to reconsider.”

So, while reducing access to guns overall through universal background checks, age limits, and permits for all gun buyers are important, creating a waiting period is a key piece of suicide prevention. 

As this story shows, even a simple 10-day period could have saved that young man’s life. Recent studies have shown even a waiting period between two and seven days will reduce suicides by 11%.

Make no mistake, waiting periods will also reduce gun homicides by 17%. That cooling off period, especially in incidents of domestic violence, slows the perpetrator down and gives the potential victim time to get away.  And, of course, we all know the Uvalde shooter bought his AR-15 just a week prior to his massacring 19 elementary school children and two teachers.

But the number one killer in suicide attempts is a gun. And Maine far outpaces the rest of the country in gun suicides. Let’s pass a waiting period to prevent these tragedies.

In the wake of over 30 men, women, and children being massacred by guns in Buffalo and Uvalde, I wrote a column saying it is time to go to referendum on five gun control proposals because politicians will inevitably fail us. This is the third of a five-part series going deeper into each proposal: A 10-day waiting period for the purchase of any firearm.

Photo: Potential buyers try out guns which are displayed on an exhibitor’s table during the Nation’s Gun Show on Nov. 18, 2016 at Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia. | Alex Wong, Getty Images