AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Senate on Tuesday defeated a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases.
The measure’s defeat was not necessarily a surprise since Maine voters rejected a similar background check expansion in a 2016 referendum, something that Gov. Janet Mills previously noted.
In the Democratic-controlled Legislature, it faced opposition from numerous members of the majority party, as evidenced by the House of Representatives passing it Monday by only one vote before the Senate defeated it Tuesday in a 21-13 vote.
The bill from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, would expand background checks to private firearm sales, transfers and gun show deals. Sellers who violate the background check requirements would face a fine of up to $1,000. Unlike the 2016 referendum, it would not restrict loaning guns to family members.
Gov. Janet Mills had been working with the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine on a compromise package of gun control bills, though the status of that effort is unclear with the clock ticking on the current legislative session. Mills went ahead Monday with signing a standalone state “straw” purchase ban that mirrors an existing federal ban on sales or transfers of firearms to people prohibited from possessing them.
The gun control debate in Augusta has played out after April’s mass shooting in which a man allegedly killed his parents and their two friends in Bowdoin before wounding a father and his two adult children on Interstate 295 near Yarmouth.
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