The investigation into a mass shooting that left at least 18 people dead at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday evening continues to unfold, but advocates and experts say the attack has already highlighted Maine’s legal laxity on gun safety.
Specifically, Maine doesn’t have some measures that have been shown to reduce gun deaths among adults, such background checks for handgun sales or laws that require gun permits— which in his own research found was associated with a 60% reduced risk of mass shootings.
Michael Rocque, a professor who has studied gun laws at Bates University in Lewiston, Maine—which was on lockdown at the khbrknews of Rocque’s interview with TIME— said that he is already worried the shooting could quickly be forgotten without taking measures to prevent more gun deaths. “We have tools at our disposal that maybe won’t stop all crime from happening, but potentially could prevent one tragedy. Isn’t that worth it, if we can do it without infringing on people’s rights?” said Rocque.
In recent years, efforts to enact gun safety measures have floundered in the state. In June, the state Senate rejected a bill that would have required background checks for private gun sales, including at gun shows, and instead passed a law prohibiting people from buying guns for someone banned from owning them. And while other states have embraced red flag laws, Maine currently only has what has been called a “yellow flag law,” which requires getting a medical professional’s opinion, in addition to a court order, to confiscate someone’s firearm temporarily; and up until recently, the law wasn’t being strongly enforced, the Portland Press Herald reported,
As Monisha Henley, senior vice president of government affairs at gun safety activist group Everytown, put it, “Gun laws really do save lives, and Maine doesn’t have that many.”
In Rocque’s view, Maine has been slow to enact gun control, in part, because residents tend to…
