Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey listens to a question during a hearing at the State House in May 2023. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Maine’s attorney general is appealing a judge’s recent decision to pause a new waiting period for gun sales.

Last week, Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker granted a request from gun rights groups to suspend a three-day waiting period for buying firearms.

The plaintiffs — including a self-defense teacher for victims of domestic violence and a state representative who sells guns — sued Attorney General Aaron Frey in November over the new law, which took effect in August.

Walker agreed the group had proven they would be harmed by the waiting period. Although Walker’s ruling was not the final say on the law’s constitutionality, he appeared to agree with the plaintiffs that the law interferes with their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

“Any interpretation to the contrary requires the type of interpretative jiujitsu that would make Kafka blush,” Walker wrote, referring to the writer Franz Kafka, whose novels explored bureaucratic absurdity.

Frey’s office has appealed Walker’s decision to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. He is asking Walker to administratively halt his decision — effectively restoring the 72-hour wait — while the appeals court weighs the case.

“The undisputed evidence in the record is that waiting periods save lives by meaningfully reducing both suicides and homicides,” Assistant Attorney General Christopher Taub wrote in a motion filed Monday.

Taub also argued that Walker’s decision contradicts seven orders by courts in other states where similar laws have been targeted by lawsuits.

That includes Vermont, where a federal judge ruled last summer against gun rights groups that wanted to overturn a waiting period law. The 1st Circuit is also considering an appeal to that ruling.

“Even though the First Circuit could choose to ultimately part ways with these seven federal district and appellate courts, there can be no doubt that there is ‘more than a mere possibility’ that it will join those courts in sister circuits in concluding that the Second Amendment does not prohibit states from adopting these types of regulations,” Taub wrote.