Maine Lawmakers Reject Universal Background Checks, Public Carry Bans

Lawmakers in Maine rejected efforts to secure universal background checks and empower county governments to enact local, public carry bans.

The Press Herald reports the universal background check push was rejected by Maine’s House on Thursday. Such checks criminalize private gun sales by requiring a background check at point of sale for every gun purchase, whether private or retail. Such action would not have prevented a single mass shooting over the last decade, but it would have criminalized the man who wanted to sell a five shot revolver to his life-long neighbor.

The Herald also reported that the effort to empower local governments to pass gun control stricter than that at the state level was also defeated, as was the effort to put 72-hour waiting periods for gun purchases into place.

The people of Maine previously rejected a universal background check measure that was placed on the ballot as Question 3. On November 9, 2016, the Banger News Daily reported that the loss was “a blow to Everytown for Gun Safety, a national group founded by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York City, which funded virtually all of the nearly $6 million campaign in Maine.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.