AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills signed into law Friday her measure to extend background checks to advertised gun sales and make changes to Maine’s “yellow flag” law after the Lewiston mass shooting.
Mills, a Democrat, still has not decided on additional gun control bills the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed earlier in April, some by only one vote due to a few majority party members joining with Republicans to oppose them.
While lawmakers had defeated those bills to require 72-hour waiting periods and ban bump stocks as recently as last year, the Oct. 25 rampage at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar that left 18 dead and 13 injured in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record drastically changed things.
She signed her bill Friday, a day after the six-month anniversary of the Lewiston carnage that was the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in 2023.
“This law represents important, meaningful progress, without trampling on anybody’s rights, and it will better protect public safety by implementing reasonable reforms and by significantly expanding mental health resources,” Mills said. “One day after the six-month anniversary of the tragedy, I am proud to say that we have taken this prudent action.”
During her State of the State speech in January, Mills unveiled her proposal to expand background checks to advertised gun sales, tweak the 2019 yellow flag law she crafted with gun-rights advocates, make it a felony to sell guns to prohibited persons and invest in various mental health and violence prevention initiatives that ended up in the supplemental budget.
The following month, Democratic lawmakers unveiled their suite of gun- and mental health-related initiatives that included the plan from Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth, to ban bump stocks and other devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like outlawed machine guns and a bill from Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, to require three-day waiting periods for gun sales. Other legislation included a bill introduced last year by Rep. Vicki Doudera, D-Camden, to study the potential creation of a process in which people who are suicidal could put their names on a do-not-sell list for firearms.
Carney tacked her bump stock ban onto her original legislation directed in part at the controversial Oxford County sheriff that requires police to destroy any forfeited weapons, rather than only those used in murders and homicides.
Before adjourning April 18, the Legislature did not take up a late effort from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, to create a “red flag” law that advocates view as stronger than the yellow flag statute due to allowing families to petition judges to remove weapons from loved ones deemed dangerous.
The existing yellow flag process requires police to take a person into protective custody before the person receives a mental health evaluation and then goes before a judge who can decide to issue a temporary weapons restriction order.
The state commission Mills set up to investigate the Lewiston mass shooting has held several meetings and released a preliminary report in March that found the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office had enough probable cause to initiate the yellow flag process with Robert Card II a month before the 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin carried out the Lewiston rampage.
Mills had not taken a public stance on the red flag proposal, which Democratic legislators acknowledged did not have the votes to pass this year. But the governor’s proposal was clear in favoring only changes to the yellow flag process.
This year’s background check expansion does not apply to transfers between family members, a key difference from a background check referendum Maine voters rejected in 2016.
Additional parts of the governor’s bill were included in the supplemental budget she signed this month, such as three new crisis receiving centers in Lewiston as well as Penobscot and Aroostook counties that will treat people in mental health or substance use crises, a new Office of Violence Prevention, $5 million to cover out-of-pocket health expenses for mass violence victims and $422,400 to fund more mental health assessments under the yellow flag law that saw a surge in getting used 176 times since the October shooting.
