The waiting period for firearm purchases approved by Maine lawmakers last year was one of the few heartening legislative reforms of 2024. Now, mere months later, it is in danger of being undone.

Time and again, when it comes to gun safety legislation, little to nothing happens. The fuzzy arguments and counterarguments clash, the impasse reigns. The lobbying for as much freedom as possible for gun shows, gun owners, buyers and sellers is professional, aggressive. And our lawmakers ultimately prove themselves to be afraid of the wrong thing: losing votes.

Somehow, despite all of this — and none of it unique to Maine — legislators in Augusta last year managed to reach some consensus on a simple, reasonable and increasingly popular measure: the 72-hour waiting period. This was a measure that, while asking little, stood to improve the safety of Mainers.

It passed into law without the signature of Gov. Janet Mills, an omission that offers an indication of just how high the political stakes.

This editorial board welcomed the new waiting period as evidence of desire for change, as some kind of official acknowledgment of the use of firearms in impulsive violent acts — suicide (the vast majority of deaths by firearm here in Maine are suicides) chief among them.

Enter Republican Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham — and a group of party co-sponsors — who last week unveiled a bill that would repeal it.

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As we wrote here back in November: “The supposed ‘quagmire’ the 72-hour pause creates for sellers and buyers and the apparent intolerability of an ‘administrative burden’ suggests that those resistant to the law have zero appreciation for its potential value to public safety. Arguments against such a modest attempt at making Maine’s relationship to firearms more safe are self-serving. Viewed more coldly, they put commerce above concern for others.”

That gun rights groups would take the waiting period to task by challenging it in the courts, although disappointing, is to be expected. That a group of elected officials would go out of their way to target it within one year of its passage is absolutely maddening.

“Well, it looked like we really cared after the shootings in Lewiston,” was the comment of a Press Herald reader last Thursday.

“I guess we are done with that.”

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