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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
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Horrific instances of gun violence like the October shooting rampage that left 18 people dead and 13 injured in Lewiston rightly get a lot of attention. However, most gun deaths in Maine and across the country happen in private, and don’t receive the same kind of media spotlight.
Most gun deaths in America are suicides. Suicide accounts for three-fifths of all gun deaths in the U.S. In Maine, nearly 90 percent of gun deaths typically are by suicide. The people who die by suicide are predominantly male, white and over 35. Maine, which has pretty lenient gun laws, had the 15th highest rate of death by suicide in the nation in 2021. Generally, suicide rates are significantly higher in states with the most lax gun laws.
Lawmakers in Augusta rightly are working to find ways to avoid more mass shootings. But as they and others consider measures to reduce gun violence, they should also strongly consider measures that have been shown to reduce suicide deaths as well.
Waiting periods and broad background checks for gun purchases top the list.
Both are under consideration in the Maine Legislature.
Gov. Janet Mills has proposed several changes to Maine law to combat gun violence including new background check provisions. In addition to revisions to the state’s (frankly weak) extreme risk protection law and strengthen the state’s mental health services, her proposal would expand background checks to all advertised private gun sales. Those sales currently can occur without the required federal background check for purchases involving licensed firearms dealers.
Among the bills introduced by Democratic lawmakers this week, is legislation to require a 72-hour waiting period for most gun purchases. Eleven states have waiting period laws, and they are under consideration in other states.
Last year, a federal judge declined to stop enforcement of Colorado’s three-day waiting period and, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period.
Maine lawmakers last year rejected a similar waiting period. But, it is likely that the tragedy in Lewiston, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, has changed the calculus in Augusta. It should.
Americans and Mainers are generally very supportive of stricter gun laws, including waiting periods and tighter background checks.
But, votes on the legislation that Maine lawmakers will soon consider aren’t just about popularity. They are about saving lives.
And, waiting periods, along with stricter background checks, have been shown to help.
“Absolutely, this study demonstrates a robust association between waiting periods and gun deaths,” Margaret Formica, a public health researcher at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, said of a Harvard University study published in 2017. The research, which she was not involved with, found a 17 percent drop in homicide deaths and a 7 percent to 11 percent drop in deaths by suicide when gun purchase waiting periods were in place.
The logic is fairly simple and straightforward, the researchers wrote. People often buy guns when they are angry or have suicidal impulses. Delaying a gun purchase may allow these impulses to diminish.
“Visceral factors, such as anger or suicidal impulses, can spur people to inflict harm on others or themselves, but tend to be transitory states,” the researchers wrote.
“Delaying a gun purchase could create a ‘cooling off’ period that reduces violence by postponing firearm acquisitions until after a visceral state has passed,” they added.
The result, simply put, is lives saved.
Gun violence ends far too many lives in Maine, and across the U.S. Taking proven steps, to help save lives, like a gun purchase waiting period and more comprehensive background checks, is long overdue.