Requiring blanket delays on firearm sales violates the Second Amendment.
That’s according to US District Court Judge Lance Walker. On Thursday, Walker issued a preliminary injunction against Maine’s 72-hour waiting period requirement for gun sales in a challenge brought by several Maine gun stores and individual gun owners. He found that the mandatory waiting period lacked a valid historical analogue and must be blocked.
“Viewed dispassionately, the Act employs no standard at all to justify disarming individuals, let alone a standard that can be described as narrow, objective, or definite,” Walker wrote in Beckwith v. Frey. “Consequently, I find that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Second Amendment claim.”
The ruling immediately prevents state officials from enforcing the three-day waiting period for gun sales while the lawsuit continues to play out. It delivers a victory for gun-rights advocates challenging waiting periods after a string of recent setbacks in cases dealing with similar delays and other commercial firearms regulations.
The lawsuit stems from the legislative package adopted in the Pine State in the wake of the 2023 Lewiston shooting—the deadliest mass shooting in state history. Maine Governor Janet Mills (D.) allowed the waiting period requirement to become law without her signature last May.
Though Mills expressed reservations about the policy potentially “overburdening our outdoor sports economy and the rights of responsible gun owners,” the state’s Attorney General Aaron Frey (D.) nevertheless claimed in court that the law did not implicate Second Amendment rights. His office defended the law by arguing that the right to “keep and bear” arms does not include a right to purchase or acquire them.
Judge Walker greeted that contention with heavy skepticism.
“Acquiring a firearm is a necessary step in the exercise of keeping and bearing a firearm,” he wrote. “Any interpretation to the contrary requires the type of interpretative jui jitsu that would make Kafka blush.”
He acknowledged that the Supreme Court in Heller cautioned that it was not casting doubt on conditions on the commercial sale of arms. However, he said that the Court never specifically opined on what restrictions fell “within this particular regulatory safe harbor.”
“It does not automatically extend to a standardless, temporary disarmament measure,” he wrote. “Because the act of acquiring a firearm, including by purchase, falls within the ambit of what it means to keep and bear arms, it is presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.”
Frey’s office argued that waiting periods implicate “unprecedented societal concerns” that call for a more “nuanced approach” to the task of finding relevantly similar laws that support the modern restriction under the Supreme Court test established in 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. His office argued that waiting periods align with the delays associated with background check regimes. He also cited historical laws that disarmed people who were actively intoxicated.
Judge Walker, however, disagreed that those examples fit under the same regulatory tradition.
“The hows and whys of background checks and drunken-carry laws do not align with the how and why of the Act presently under review,” he wrote.
Unlike waiting periods, Walker said those restrictions rely on narrow and definite standards designed to capture certain people individually determined to pose a risk with a firearm.
“Whereas one might pass a background check or avoid prosecution for drunken carry by demonstrating a clean record or sobriety, respectively, law-abiding citizens cannot overcome Maine’s 72-hour ban by measuring themselves against and affirmatively satisfying a standard,” he wrote.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D.) can appeal the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. However, his office did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
