One of the only measures approaching “gun control” passed by the Maine Legislature last year is at risk of being undone by a legal challenge mounted by gun rights advocates – and that, to put it plainly, is a shame. 

The law at issue, which requires people who are buying guns to wait 72 hours to receive the gun, is designed to prevent suicide by firearm and other acts of gun violence committed impulsively. Maine became the 10th state, along with Washington, D.C., to bring in such a law. Colorado, Florida and Illinois are in this group. Three other states (Minnesota, Maryland and New Jersey) have waiting periods for certain guns.

Although the American public is mostly keenly aware and afraid of the utter tragedy of the mass shooting, the vast majority of deaths by firearm here in Maine are suicides – in 2022, 87% of deaths, which amounted to 156 fatalities, mostly of men and boys. Nationally, we fare very poorly: According to a 2022 report, an average of 59% of gun deaths in the U.S. were suicides in 2020, versus 86% in Maine.

The waiting period is slammed by opponents as fundamentally unconstitutional and criticized as being an arbitrary standard. In Maine, as elsewhere, the statute will have been prepared secure in the expectation that it would face legal challenges. Sooner or later, we will find out whether it was made airtight enough to survive.

“This is an emotional issue for many, and there are compelling arguments for and against,” Gov. Janet Mills said in an April statement explaining she would let the law pass without her signature. “This is not an easy issue.”

This was a cautious and generous stance by the governor. It’s not an easy issue, no – but it was reductive to suggest that the “emotional” weight of gun violence in Maine being driven by suicide could be as compelling as the need for the state’s gun shows, to give just one example, to avoid the introduction of any friction at all.

The supposed “quagmire” the 72-hour pause creates for sellers and buyers and the apparent intolerability of an “administrative burden” suggests that those resistant to the law have zero appreciation for its intent, for its potential value to public safety. Arguments against such a modest attempt at making Maine’s relationship to firearms more safe are self-serving. Viewed more coldly, they put commerce above concern for others. 

One month before the devastation of the Lewiston shooting last October, this editorial board wrote the following: “Place the ‘unfair burden’ of laughably dry, run-of-the-mill measures like waiting periods on purchases on those law-abiding gun owners. Even if you think they’re merely symbolic, make these safeguards a reasonable condition of gun ownership, a right that has caused America such staggering loss and bloodshed. That’s the only unfair burden at issue here.”

Our position holds.