A legal battle has erupted in Maine after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the state’s 72-hour waiting period law, and state Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a motion to stay enforcement of the judge’s ruling, according to WMTW News.
The case is known as Beckwith et.al. v. Frey, named for plaintiff Andrea Beckwith. She is joined by the East Coast School of Safety, Nancy Coshow, Maine State Rep. James White (J. White Gunsmithing), Adam Hendsbee, A&G Shooting, Thomas Cole and TLC Gunsmithing and Armory.
The law, which took effect last August, was challenged in November, according to the Maine Morning Star, which reported Beckwith teaches self-defense courses for domestic violence survivors.
Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, a Donald Trump appointee, observed in his 17-page 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…. In fact, the Act is filled with and motivated by doubt—doubt about what someone could conceivably do, but far more likely will not do, upon carrying a firearm away from a seller. That kind of doubt is timeless, and certainly it was familiar to our forebears in the Colonial and Reconstruction Eras. Yet we still have a Second Amendment that reads: ‘[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ U.S. Const. amend. II”
As noted by WMTW News, the waiting period was among several laws passed in reaction to the October 2023 shooting rampage in Lewiston, which claimed the lives of 18 people at two separate locations. WMTW described it as “the deadliest shooting in state history.”
Judge Walker’s ruling was quickly criticized by gun control lobbying groups, and many such groups had filed amicus briefs. They included the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians, Maine Coalition to end Domestic Violence and the Maine Gun Safety Coalition.
Judge Walker’s ruling will be appealed to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
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