By Michael Shepherd - June 13, 2023
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A policy response to Maine's April shootings looks stalled over a wider debate on guns. Changes to Maine's gun laws seemed likely after 34-year-old Joseph M. Eaton was arrested after a random April shooting on Interstate 95 in Yarmouth and the preceding killings of his parents and two of their friends in a Bowdoin home roughly 25 miles away.

The day after Maine's deadliest shooting in decades, David Trahan, the executive director of the gun-rights Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, detailed talks with Gov. Janet Mills about a consensus package of reforms. They would likely include a state law banning "straw" purchases of firearms on behalf of people like Eaton who are barred as felons from having them, as well as more resources for the state's "yellow flag" weapons restriction law.

But the package has not come forward in the waning days of the Legislature, which is trying to wrap up its work in the next two weeks or so. Trahan said he believes those reforms could go forward now, but that the issue is being intertwined with talks among more progressive Democrats about further-reaching gun control policies that Mills and his group have opposed.

"I think we're just now caught in the end-of-session, controversial, going-back-and-forth bartering that happens every year," Trahan, a former Republican lawmaker, said.

Leading Democrats have been tight-lipped on these negotiations. A Mills spokesperson said last week that the administration is "hopeful that we can put forward a bill that can garner bipartisan support and take continued meaningful action to protect public safety," and a spokesperson for House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, did not respond to a request for comment.

Talbot Ross is the leader of the Legislature's progressive wing, and she has put forward perhaps the biggest gun-control measure of the year here that would require background checks on private sales and transfers of firearms. Democrats voted that change out of committee alongside a 72-hour waiting period and other changes, even though Mills has opposed background check expansions citing Maine's 2016 vote against the idea.

Her stance and her alliance with Trahan's group has been politically powerful in Augusta, inking the yellow flag law and keeping a cap on gun control. Those sweeping reforms are likely to get their floor votes sometime soon, but it is unclear if they will pass. There is a standalone straw purchase ban that won Republican support and could go through as well.

Supporters of those gun-control ideas are coming to the State House on Tuesday to lobby lawmakers ahead of initial votes. Lynn Ellis, the legislative director for the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, said while it has not had all the details of the alliance's negotiations with the governor, it supports the straw purchase ban and could support other elements as well.

"At the same time, where we can't seem to come to consensus is on background checks and a 72-hour waiting period," she said.

On the other side of the debate, Trahan said he has general agreement with the Mills administration on straw purchases and other changes. He also wants to more directly address situations like Eaton's with a bill likely to come next year that would require probation-type checks on homes that violent felons released from prison are going to stay in.

"We can do better when we're releasing dangerous people into society," he said.