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AUGUSTA, Maine — Democrats in the Maine Legislature have introduced bills covering 72-hour waiting periods on gun purchases and a host of additional violence prevention and mental health initiatives in response to the state’s deadliest mass shooting on record.
The new proposals, which have the backing of most Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives, attempt to go past what Gov. Janet Mills proposed last month in response to the October mass shooting in Lewiston. She wants to expand background checks and tweak the “yellow flag” law to make it easier for police to take dangerous people into protective custody.
It was not immediately clear if more legislation is in the works, but the Legislature is running out of time to pass bills in the session scheduled to end in mid-April. Democratic lawmakers will hold a 12:30 p.m. briefing Wednesday at the State House to discuss the proposals.
One bill from Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, makes another attempt at requiring 72-hour waiting periods for firearm purchases, after a similar effort from Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, failed to pass in both chambers last year.
Rotundo’s bill is sponsored by dozens of Democrats, including formerly NRA-backed Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, though several majority party members who helped defeat last year’s version are not signed on as cosponsors.
A lengthier proposal from Jackson and House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, has cosponsorship from rural Democrats who opposed past gun-control efforts, such as Reps. Tavis Hasenfus of Readfield, Scott Landry of Farmington, Jessica Fay of Raymond, Allison Hepler of Woolwich and Ron Russell of Verona Island.
That bill includes six parts:
— $9 million to establish six crisis receiving centers in Androscoggin, Aroostook, Oxford, Penobscot, Washington and York counties;
— requiring the state to implement procedures to notify the deaf and hard-of-hearing community of active shooter situations, along with procedures to notify all federally licensed firearm dealers in Maine about all statewide law enforcement alerts relating to people determined to be dangerous or in mental health crises;
— a new Office of Violence Prevention;
— $6 million to reduce waitlists for and expand access to medication management services;
— about $2.5 million to expand mental health crisis intervention mobile responses to 24/7 services; and
— a “gun shop project” that would mandate dealers distribute suicide prevention educational materials.
The Oct. 25 mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar left 18 people dead and 13 injured. It was the country’s deadliest mass shooting in 2023 and the deadliest in Maine history, forcing a Democratic-leaning state long considered one of the safest in the nation to grapple with its lax gun laws alongside a strong gun ownership and hunting culture.
Since the Lewiston rampage and 48-hour manhunt ended with police finding gunman Robert Card II, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the State House has featured months of closed-door discussions and rallies from gun-control advocates calling for changes from the Democratic-led Legislature.
Mills, who has worked with the pro-gun rights Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine over the years to oppose more sweeping gun-control proposals, unveiled a plan in January during her State of the State speech to expand background check requirements to advertised gun sales, create a statewide network of crisis receiving centers for those in mental health emergencies and amend the “yellow flag” law’s protective custody provisions, among other changes.
Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association have criticized the Mills proposal and Democratic legislators whom the NRA accused in a Tuesday alert of “looking to strip you of your Second Amendment rights.”
Gun-control advocates, including the Maine Gun Safety Coalition and Moms Demand Action, have also called for an assault-style weapons ban and an upgraded “red flag” law that does not require a medical provider to evaluate a person before a judge considers a request from family or police to temporarily take away their firearms.
Card’s family and Army Reserve peers had warned police several times in the months before the October shooting about his increasingly erratic behavior, threats to “shoot up” places and access to firearms. He was hospitalized over the summer for about two weeks while training with his unit in New York and did not answer the door in September when Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputies went to his residence to conduct a welfare check.
An independent commission that Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey formed in the wake of the shooting has heard from the sheriff’s office, state and local police and family members of victims, with U.S. Army personnel scheduled to appear next week at a March 7 meeting.
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