On Feb. 13, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker granted a preliminary injunction against Maine’s 72-hour waiting period on gun sales.
This mandatory waiting period went into effect on Aug. 9, 2024, in response to the Lewiston mass shooting of 2023. A few months after the law was implemented, Gun Owners of Maine and the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine filed a federal lawsuit, with the backing of the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the legal counsel of Second Amendment attorneys from Clement & Murphy, against the state of Maine.
The plaintiffs in this case, Andrea Beckwith et al. v. Aaron Frey, were several Maine citizens, businesses, and federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs) who contended that the law infringed on their Second Amendment rights and was inconsistent with pro-gun precedents established by the Supreme Court. Beckwith is a firearms instructor and a survivor of domestic abuse, who revealed at the time of the lawsuit’s filing she had to inform at-risk clients looking for immediate protection that they will be subject to a three-day waiting period to legally acquire a firearm.
The defendant in this case is Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, who is tasked with enforcing the gun control law. The lawsuit made its way to the U.S. District Court of Maine, in which the court applied the two-step analysis established by the landmark New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen Supreme Court decision that consists of the following:
- Whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the regulated conduct.
- Whether the regulation is consistent with the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Judge Walker determined that obtaining firearms is protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment, discarding the argument that “keep and bear” precludes the acquisition of a firearm. He picked apart Frey’s legal reasoning, arguing, “Though [Attorney General] Frey concedes that the Constitution makes inviolate a right to keep and bear arms, he asserts that it does not protect the corollary right to acquire arms, which is a curious construction indeed.”
“Though [Attorney General] Frey concedes that the Constitution makes inviolate a right to keep and bear arms, he asserts that it does not protect the corollary right to acquire arms, which is a curious construction indeed.” pic.twitter.com/AXDn9HP4Ts
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) February 13, 2025
Judge Walker also observed that “Acquiring a firearm is a necessary step in the exercise of keeping and bearing a firearm. Any interpretation to the contrary requires the type of interpretative jui jitsu that would make Kafka blush.” The federal district judge stressed, “There is nothing novel or nefarious about that basic reality that would warrant torturing the concepts of keeping, bearing, or carrying to exclude from their meaning the acquisition or purchase of a firearm.”
Judge Walker underscored how Frey tortured the concepts of keeping, bearing, or carrying a firearm to rationalize the state’s unconstitutional action:
There is nothing novel or nefarious about that basic reality that would warrant torturing the concepts of keeping, bearing, or carrying to exclude from their meaning the acquisition or purchase of a firearm.
The lack of a regulatory analogue in U.S. history and tradition and the lack of “narrow, objective, and definite standards” to justify the disarmament of individuals, played major parts in shaping Walker’s ruling:
Beyond the lack of a suitable regulatory analogue in our Nation’s history and tradition, waiting period laws like the one contained in the Act do not employ narrow, objective, or definite standards to justify disarming individuals.
For Walker, granting the plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunctive relief was a no-brainer in this case noting that the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction:
Undoubtedly, deprivation of the right to keep and bear arms, particularly for purposes of self-defense, is of such qualitative importance to be considered irremediable through subsequent relief. Persons most harmed by the waiting period are likely to be seeking to carry for self-defense in case of confrontation. Such an interest is well represented here, by Plaintiff Andrea Beckwith.
Walker also likened Maine’s infringement on the right to bear arms via the imposition of a waiting period to infringements on the right to free speech:
Furthermore, regardless of whatever degrees of injury one might imagine, statutory disarmament in the absence of individual cause is inimical to our Nation’s history and traditions. It is to the Second Amendment what a prior restraint is to the First. I have little trouble finding irreparable injury in this context.
In effect, this preliminary injunction halts the enforcement of the 72-hour waiting period law while the case is litigated on its merits.
Unquestionably, the Bruen decision has cast a large shadow on Walker’s latest ruling, and it will continue to do so in several courts nationwide. The Bruen decision’s new standard of focusing on historical analogues as opposed to modern policy considerations make it harder to justify new gun control measures. The Bruen decision shifted the burden to the government to demonstrate that a gun control law is consistent with historical tradition, as opposed to mandating plaintiffs to demonstrate its inconsistency.
While the Bruen decision is no cure-all for gun control, the precedents it has established will make it much more difficult for states to get away with enforcing constitutionally dubious gun laws.
About José Niño
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. You can contact him via Facebook and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
