With eleventh hour guidance from the state, Maine gun retailers on Friday began requiring a three-day wait period for gun purchases under one of the new safety laws adopted following the state’s deadliest mass shooting.
Maine joins a dozen other states with similar laws, requiring that buyers wait 72 hours to complete a purchase and retrieve a weapon. The law is among several gun-related bills adopted after an Army reservist killed 18 people and injured 13 others on Oct. 25, 2023, in Lewiston.
The new law wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy — the gunman bought his guns legally months earlier — but Friday’s milestone was celebrated by gun safety advocates who believe it will prevent gun deaths by providing a cooling-off period for people intent on buying a gun to do harm to others or themselves.
Gun store owners complained about the guidance, released just Tuesday, and the loss of sales to out-of-state visitors during Maine’s busy summer tourism season. They also said the waiting period will take a toll on gun shows.
Gun store owners complained about the guidance, released just Tuesday, and the loss of sales to out-of-state visitors during Maine’s busy summer tourism season. They also said the waiting period will take a toll on gun shows.
Awww, it’s a real shame that saving a few lives might cost a few dollars to business owners who sell the weapons used to take those lives.
loss of sales to out-of-state visitors
business owners with the attitude of “the whole world is obliged to keep me in business” AKA “i’m entitled to all the money everyone hasn’t given me” can go fuck themselves
yes, that’s basically all of them
People who operate in the murder weapons business are upset that the murder rate might go down.
They deal with death but can’t deal with the fact that their business dies…
I am once again asking for recognition that the primary drivers of violence like this are socioeconomic inequality and lack of mental health care
Other nations struggle with those issues too but don’t have the same problem with gun violence. I wonder why?
Other nations struggle with those issues too
I agree with you but other nations is vague. If by other nations you are comparing us to other very developed nations (Ex Europe) I would counter that the US has these issues to a way more extreme degree.
If you look at the UK for example, there are areas of high poverty and access to mental health care is practically nonexistent. I wouldn’t describe the difference between the UK and the US on these issues as “way more extreme”.
The biggest difference is access to firearms.
Sure wish the people who wanted to make guns as easy to get as possible weren’t saying the same thing while also stamping out any initiative to address these issues and defunding any existing ones.
Me too, bud. Me too.
Don’t worry. The Supreme Court will rule it’s unconstitutional. Can’t let people’s lives get in the way when there are gun manufacturer profits to worry about.
“Things should be left up to the state…wait, not that thing”
By ruling this unconstitutional it would possibly make the case about Hunter not being allowed to purchase a gun at said time unconstitutional as well would it not? That was not a federal form, but a state gun purchasing restriction. Not sure they want to chance that right now.
I guess people want something done without knowing what to do… As the article states, this law wouldn’t have prevented the shooting that motivated passing it.
It wasn’t just 1 shooting that motivated it, and you clearly must know that, so why are you trying to sell a false narrative? This will save lives as well. It isn’t a full solution though. This will mitigate immediate crimes of passion using guns by people who don’t currently own them. The number of people who go out and buy a gun when upset to shoot someone is non-zero. The number of people who have calmed down enough 3 days later will hopefully also be non-zero. Florida always had a longer period for such.
Waiting periods do appear to have a small but significant effect on reducing gun homicides according to the research I’ve seen, although I haven’t looked at data specifically for Maine, which is a state with a lot more guns but a lot less gun violence than the average.
(The study I looked at appears to show that background checks increase gun homicides so I don’t trust it very much, but a Rand meta-analysis also claims that that small but significant effect is real.)
My point isn’t that waiting periods are bad policy but rather that they’re an irrational response to this mass shooting. (And it is this particular mass shooting that convinced Maine to pass the law.) Gun violence that would not have been prevented by a waiting period is evidence against the efficacy of waiting periods, but here people are responding to that evidence by increasing their support for waiting periods. It’s contrary to basic logic.
The guy had pretty bad brain damage and was apparently a grenade trainer in the army. There have been some deeply unsettling links to the use of explosives and CTE. These injuries likely can’t be mitigated by better helmets/armor either. CTE is directly linked to violence.
Maine has no capability to alter what our military uses as ordinance. It can, in the wake of a horrifying slaughter commited with a gun, look at ways of mitigating future gun murders. That’s what it’s has done here. Not a “1 for 1” response to a specific issue they can’t affect, but an overall improvement of gun safety.
You’re right about CTE, but I still don’t see why passing this legislation in response to a mass shooting that it would not have prevented makes more sense than, for example, restricting guns in response to a murder committed with a knife. In both cases, the murder weapon is outside of the category of weapons affected by the law.
But it may help prevent future incidents from happening.
You don’t know until you try. Or you can simply look to other nations who have similar gun control rules in place to see what the outcomes might be.
It’s a start.
A very small one, but it’s still a move in the right direction.
“Three day planning period implemented in Maine”
