Rooks: Maine has reached the tipping point in the fight against gun violence

The ripples of last week’s “mass shootings” – an inadequate term, but all we have – continue to spread, but gradually the shock waves are receding from the days immediately following the horrific events in Lewiston.

For a time everyone locked their doors, while the search for the man who took 18 lives, not including his own, maimed 13 more and damaged countless others created a pervasive dread.

Along with care for the suffering, we now confront a question that has vexed American politics for decades: What do we do now?

When I moved to Maine four decades ago, I was told this was a hunting state, but also a safe one, and any gun regulations were viewed with extreme suspicion by gun owners who – with the then-recent formation of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) – were a powerful lobby.

There was evidence to back it up. When a young governor, Ken Curtis, proposed mild regulations in 1968 following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, who’d campaigned for him, the bill was shouted down during a raucous hearing at the Augusta Armory.

Congress did pass a Gun Control Act that year limiting the supply of weaponry, the last federal legislation until the Clinton administration in 1993.

The “Brady bill,” named for Ronald Reagan’s press secretary badly wounded in the 1981 presidential assassination attempt, restricted access to firearms; Reagan himself, despite a near-fatal wound, opposed it.

These two methods, targeting weapons themselves and access to them, have been proposed many times since, but Maine’s resistance, like that of Congress, has remained.

Now, times may have changed.

The clearest sign was U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, who had a road-to-Damascus conversion after hearing what had happened in his home town. An Iraq war veteran familiar with the type of rifles used in the Lewiston shootings, he’d believed “it couldn’t happen here,” despite millions in circulation.

Golden confessed he was wrong, and asked for “forgiveness and support” from those in Lewiston and around the far-flung 2^nd District. It was a stunning admission, providing an opening for action.

That’s not likely to occur at the federal level, at least for now. Maine’s two U.S. senators, Republican Susan Collins and Independent Angus King, are sticking to their contention we should reduce the “lethality” of semi-automatic high-power weapons, not ban them.

But if we’re serious about preventing the violence that just occurred in Maine, repeated endlessly around the country, only some version of a ban will be effective, as Golden acknowledges.

Even if moderates like King and Collins were to shift, there’s still the Republican-held House, and that caucus only wants to weaken, not strengthen, firearms regulations.

That leaves the Legislature, and here there’s an obvious parallel with the Newtown, Conn. shootings where a second grade classroom at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was raked by gunfire in 2012, leaving 26 dead, mostly young children.

It then seemed unthinkable, but has since been repeated, not least because Congress failed to overcome a Senate filibuster and act, much to the outrage of then-freshman Sen. King.

Connecticut lawmakers did act, though not without much prodding from Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, now chancellor of the University of Maine System. Connecticut, among other regulations, bans the sale of semi-automatic weapons and has a “red flag” law allowing those credibly suspected of murderous intent to be temporarily separated from their weapons.

These laws have been effective in reducing gun violence, as they have been in other states where they’ve been adopted.

Maine last considered a red flag law in 2018, when then-Attorney General Janet Mills and others convinced lawmakers a “yellow flag” law was sufficient. It clearly wasn’t on Oct. 25.

A yellow flag law relies on police officers filing “dangerousness” petitions in a field where they’re not trained, followed by a full judicial proceeding. Red flag laws allow mental health care professionals and family members to petition a judge, who can order removal of firearms pending a full hearing.

Police only become involved in a situation like that of Robert Card II much later: often too late.

The Lewiston delegation, led by Kristen Cloutier, assistant House majority leader, is solidly behind reform measures, a top priority when lawmakers return in January.

The stance of Gov. Mills, a long-time opponent of most gun regulations who has an “A” rating from SAM, is unknown. She’s deferred any such discussion, along with impounding most details of the shootings which, with Card’s death, will not involve criminal proceedings.

The time for leadership from the top has arrived, however. In the wake of Oct. 25, the people of Maine will accept no less.

Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter since 1984. His new book, “Calm Command: U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller in His Times, 1888-1910,” is available in bookstores and from Maine Authors Publishing. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net

More: Deputies were warned Robert Card had guns, threatened a shooting, was 'going to snap'

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Rooks: Maine reaches tipping point in the fight against gun violence