Maine Gun-Control Proponents Fail to Override Governor’s Veto of Bump Stock Ban

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:29 pm

Democrats in the Maine State Senate have come up short of the votes they needed to override Democrat Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s veto of a bill intended to ban bump stocks and other devices meant to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic weapon.

On Friday, the Maine Senate voted 18-16 to override Mills’s veto of L.D. 2086, falling short of the two-thirds margin they needed. The bill originally focused on the procedures for state authorities to dispose of forfeited firearms, but lawmakers added an amendment to prohibit devices that, when attached to a firearm, “materially increase” the rate of fire of a firearm or “approximate the operation or rate of fire of a machinegun.”

The final version of the bill passed in the Maine State House last month by a vote of 74-68 and in the Senate by a vote of 19-15.

Proponents of the amended bill presented the legislation as a way to make state-level law match a rule implemented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2019 under President Donald Trump.

Throughout the 2000s, the ATF repeatedly examined early iterations of bump stocks and determined they do not qualify as machine guns, which are strictly regulated under federal law. Following the 2017 Las Vegas shooting in which federal investigators alleged the shooter used multiple rifles equipped with bump stocks, the ATF issued a new rule declaring bump stocks to be machine gun devices and requiring owners to destroy or surrender them.

Gun rights proponents have challenged the ATF rule. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2023 that bump stocks are not machine guns, effectively allowing ownership of the devices to continue in their jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing legal arguments that could overturn the ATF rule nationwide.

As the Supreme Court prepares to issue its ruling on the bump stock decision, gun control proponents in Maine have sought to at least ban such devices at the state level. Mills acknowledged these motivations even as she announced her decision to veto L.D. 2086 on April 29.

“L.D. 2086, as amended, is apparently designed to act as a backstop in the event the ATF regulation is invalidated, but it also uses much broader language to define the machine guns, modified semi-automatic weapons that operate like machine guns, and conversion devices that would be banned,” Mills wrote. “That language is not only far more expansive than the Federal standard, but it also differs from the statutes enacted in the small number of states that have attempted to address this issue in statute.”

Mills said she agrees with prohibiting machine guns and devices “whose sole purpose is to convert a lawful semi-automatic firearm into a weapon that is the functional equivalent of a machine gun,” but shared concern that L.D. 2086 would “unintentionally ban a significant number of weapons used for hunting or target shooting by responsible gun owners in Maine.”

Three Maine Senate Democrats joined 13 Senate Republicans in choosing to let Mills’s veto stand.

Maine lawmakers have pressed for other gun control measures this session, alongside the bump stock ban.

The Democrat-majority state legislature passed another bill imposing a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases. Mills let that bill become law without her signature.

Last month, Mills also signed into a law a bill she supported, to expand Maine’s existing “extreme risk protection order” law. This law allows police and prosecutors in Maine to seek a court order to take a person’s firearms if a medical professional also completes an assessment supporting the seizure.