Maine state legislators just did something that gives some encouragement to Second Amendment activists across the country: They said “no” to Moms Demand Action and the gun prohibition lobby in the nation’s Northeast.
According to the Portland Press Herald, “Leaders of the Maine Legislature voted against allowing seven gun-related bills to be introduced in the next legislative session.” Predictably, anti-gunners are an unhappy lot, with Nacole Palmer, described as a volunteer with the Maine chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America declaring, “Every other day, a person in Maine dies from a gunshot, meanwhile a small group of legislators blocked gun safety legislation from even being discussed in 2020.”
The newspaper noted that about 88 percent of all Pine Tree State gun-related fatalities are suicides. Yet, the gun prohibition lobby lumps them all together with homicides and accidents under the dramatic heading of “gun violence.”
A check of the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2018 shows Maine logged a total of 23 murders last year, of which 11 involved firearms. That’s not much of a “gun violence epidemic,” as the anti-gun crowd likes to claim about firearms-related deaths. Six of those slayings involved handguns. None of them involved a rifle. One definitely involved a shotgun and four were committed with unidentified firearms.
Nationally, about two-thirds of all deaths involving guns are suicides. Yet, they are called “gun violence” deaths and combined with murders in a deliberate effort to create the impression of something more sinister.
The newspaper said a 10-member Legislative Council “reviewed 399 proposed bills on Wednesday and voted to exclude all but 133 of them – including the gun-related measures – from the session that begins in January.”
Is this a signal to the pushy gun control crowd that they have pushed enough? With a contentious 2020 election just over one year away, and gun rights versus gun control likely to be a major campaign issue, this rejection of the anti-gun agenda so early could be bad news for gun grabbers.
It comes just as the Economist is getting plenty of attention for running an analysis of how Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s mid-summer blurt about seizing guns has helped the “gun lobby.” The article quotes UCLA law professor and author Adam Winkler observing, “For years, liberals have said we’re not coming to take your guns and now Beto O’Rourke has said we’re coming to take your guns.”
It was a watershed moment, as noted by Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, who said in reaction, “Second Amendment activists have been ridiculed by Democrats and the gun prohibition lobby for years. Condescending assurances that ‘nobody is going to take your guns’ just went out the window…”
Gottlieb said the most alarming thing about that moment during the summer Democrat debate was the cheering from the audience and the lack of any disagreement from any of the other candidates on stage.
In Maine, the decision to spike gun control was apparently bipartisan. The Legislative Council includes six Democrats and four Republicans among whom are the majority leader sin both the House and Senate, the House speaker and Senate president.
Meanwhile, O’Rourke just received a national rebuff from law enforcement over this vow to send police officers to seize privately owned firearms.
The Washington Examiner quoted Joe Gamaldi, vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, telling Fox and Friends, “At a time when everyone is asking us to bridge the gap with the community, his brilliant idea to connect with our citizens is to go door to door and seize their property? It’s completely ridiculous.”
O’Rourke is tanking in the polls. Soon, his campaign may be just as derailed as the gun control agenda in Maine.
