Maine lawmakers have rejected a proposal to allow residents to sue gunmakers over injuries stemming from illegal firearm sales, while advancing several other proposals after last year’s Lewiston mass shooting.
The Maine House of Representatives previously passed the proposal regarding illegal gun sales, but the state Senate voted it down Friday night. The proposal was designed to let residents sue manufacturers over both injuries from illegal gun sales and deceptive marketing, the Bangor Daily News reported.
New gun laws have been a major focus of the Maine Legislature since the Oct. 25 shootings at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston that killed 18 people.
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The shooter, Robert R. Card, an Army reservist, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a two-day search. Fellow reservists, as well as members of Card’s family, had expressed concerns to law enforcement about his deteriorating mental health and collection of guns in the months leading up to the shooting.
Family members told Sagadahoc County deputies in May that Card had shown signs of mental psychosis going back to early 2023 and that he had recently obtained up to 15 guns from his brother’s home. Last summer, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric facility after making threats against members of his Army Reserve unit, according to sheriff’s department reports.
Sheriff’s deputies tried to speak with Card at his home in Bowdoin, Maine, on Sept. 16, but no one answered the door, even as they heard someone moving around inside. The deputies phoned Card’s commanding officer in the Army Reserve, who told them he felt it was best to leave Card “to himself for a bit.”
The Maine Senate moved several other proposals ahead Friday. They include a ban on bump stocks and the creation of 72-hour waiting periods for gun purchases. Gun advocates cheered those moves, though they will require more votes to become laws.
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“We know that there is more work to do, but the members of the Senate have done the right thing, and their actions will save lives," said Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition.
The Legislature also will consider a proposal to create a “red flag law” designed to remove guns from potentially dangerous people.
Maine already has a yellow flag law, the only one of its kind in the nation, which requires that a person be taken into protective custody and evaluated by a mental health professional before police can seek a weapons restriction from a judge. Passed in 2019, the measure is narrower and requires more steps than red flag laws, which let family members in more than 20 states go directly to a judge to ask for weapons restrictions.
Last month, the state commission investigating the Lewiston shootings determined that the Sagadahoc Sheriff’s Office had sufficient information to start the process for securing a yellow flag order against Card before he killed 18 people, raising new questions about the law’s effectiveness.
A report from the commission cited multiple failures by officers in both the sheriff’s department and at the Army Reserve unit. In one episode, the commission noted that a Sagadahoc deputy’s decision to instead have Card’s relatives try to remove his guns, despite knowing he was suffering mental illness and had threatened to commit mass shootings, was an “abdication of law enforcement’s responsibility.”
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