Gun groups say Maine’s new waiting period law will crater gun show attendance

Business was brisk at the last gun show before a new Maine law takes effect that establishes a three-day waiting period for most firearm purchases. It’s a requirement that opponents say will sap attendance and potentially end such events, which is why the two-day show at the Elks Lodge in Augusta also doubled as a fundraiser for a pending legal challenge to the new law.

The Elks Lodge banquet hall was packed with people who perused an assortment of firearms and knives that ranged from modern to vintage. Randy Shibles of Hartland leaned toward the latter when he purchased a Yugoslavian Mauser rifle from the post World War II era.

“I’m kind of trying to be a collector of some older, more unique stuff. So anything I can get my hands on is good for me,” he said.

Shibles was able to leave Saturday’s show with his purchase, but that won’t be the case after Aug. 9 when Maine joins nearly a dozen other states with some kind of waiting period on firearms purchases.

Gun rights groups like the Gun Owners of Maine have vowed to challenge the constitutionality of the law alongside their counterparts in Vermont, Colorado and New Mexico where waiting period laws recently went into effect.

The Augusta gun show will help fund the Maine lawsuit because the organizer, Freedom Promotions, is turning over proceeds from the event to the legal fight.

Ryan Appleby, co-owner of Freedom Promotions, said the law will hurt gun shows because prospective attendees may not want to go if they can’t leave with their purchase. He said that will primarily affect rural vendors because buyers may not want to go through the trouble of traveling to pick up their gun after the waiting period is over.

And while vendors are trying to work out transfers between dealers, Appleby worries many prospective buyers just won’t bother.

“If even 20 percent or so of the customers don’t want to deal with that — even though they know they can, they just don’t want to — that kind of brings attendance down enough at the bigger shows that it’s probably not going to be feasible enough to do it,” he said.

The new waiting period law was passed by the Legislature in response to the Lewiston mass shooting and as a way to prevent suicide by gun, which accounted for 90 percent of Maine gun deaths in 2021.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills cited that statistic when she allowed the law to go into effect without her signature, a move reflecting her ambivalence to a measure she said might be “constitutionally suspect.”

The law is championed by gun safety groups because it creates a cooling off period for people who might purchase a gun during a moment of crisis. Activists have also noted that other states with waiting periods continue to have robust gun show schedules.

Still, the law has angered gun rights groups that have vowed to hold the lawmakers who voted for it accountable in this fall’s legislative elections.

The lawsuit has not yet been filed, but Laura Whitcomb of the Gun Owners of Maine is confident it will be successful. That belief is rooted in the 2022 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, that gun rights activists believe significantly limits a state’s ability to restrict citizens’ right to carry firearms for self-defense.

This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public .