A right delayed is a right denied. That's not always the case, of course – people who wanted to vote before even early voting was opened weren't denied their right to vote, for example. They just had to wait – but it's true in a lot of cases.
One of those is when you want to buy a firearm.
Maine recently passed a 72-hour waiting period for gun sales. This is one of the bills passed in response to the Lewiston shooting but would have had absolutely no impact on Lewiston. Why Maine passed it considering the facts of that incident is beyond me, since the killer had owned the guns he used for quite a while, but the legislature still passed it.
And a lot of people are less than thrilled about it. Gun rights groups, for example, have filed a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the law:
The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and Gun Owners of Maine had expressed their intent to sue after Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who previously opposed sweeping gun-control measures, let the waiting period bill become law in April without her signature. The law took effect in early August and says gun dealers must wait 72 hours after making an “agreement” with a customer to turn the firearm over to them.
The waiting period violates people’s Second Amendment rights, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Maine in Bangor. The lawsuit against Attorney General Aaron Frey is filed by five Mainers: Andrea Beckwith, owner of East Coast School of Safety; Rep. Jim White, R-Guilford, who owns J White Gunsmithing; Adam Hendsbee, owner of A&G Shooting; Thomas Cole, owner of TLC Gunsmithing; and Nancy Coshow of Bridgton, who had to wait to buy a gun.
They asked for a preliminary injunction, where a federal judge would pause the law until the lawsuit is settled. No future court dates are scheduled.
A challenge to Maine’s waiting period law has been expected since it took effect this summer. The proposal from Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, was one of several gun control and mental health measures from Democratic lawmakers after the Oct. 25, 2023, rampage at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar that killed 18 and injured 13 more in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting. The gunman, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, legally purchased his semi-automatic rifle several months before the shooting and before he received psychiatric treatment in New York.
“We look forward to defending this important public safety law,” Frey said Wednesday. “Waiting periods have been upheld across the country as a reasonable, limited regulation that does not infringe on Second Amendment rights.”
They have, but I can't recall that happening since the Bruen decision, and that's why this case may well be different.
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Bruen said that for a gun control law to be considered constitutional, there has to be an analog from around the time of the nation's founding. This would show that this was not something the Founding Fathers would have considered an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.
This is a reasonable line to draw, all things considered. Where Maine is going to run into a problem, though, is that there isn't any analog for waiting periods. Those previous rulings were before this line was drawn. A completely different standard was at work back then, one that often gave deferential treatment to the government's arguments as a matter of course.
Those days are supposed to be over, which means officials in Maine shouldn't set their hopes too high.
