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  • 17 Apr 2024 9:02 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Legislative Update & Next Steps

    On April 16th, the House of Representatives passed both the 72-Hour Waiting Period and Machine Gun re-definition bills by one vote each. 

    As of this hour, because they have both already passed through the Senate, they now need to have an enactment vote in both the House and Senate.

    Below, please find links to the current status of the gun-related bills before the House and Senate, in which you can find the roll calls of how each legislator voted.

    It is important to recognize that, though in the minority, there are many pro-gun rights legislators that are standing strong for our rights in the House and Senate. If your legislator is among them, please take a moment to thank them for their support. When they are available, we will send some links to some of their floor speeches, they are worth listening to. 

    LD 2224: An Act to Strengthen Public Safety by Improving Maine's Firearm Laws and Mental Health System  (Expanded Yellow Flag Law and Background Checks)

    Status and Roll Call

    LD 2283: An Act to Enact the Crisis Intervention Order Act to Protect the Safety of the Public  (RED FLAG)  This Bill was just reported out of committee on 4/16 and has not yet had a floor vote as of this hour.

    LD 2238: An Act to Address Gun Violence in Maine by Requiring a Waiting Period for Certain Firearm Purchases (72-Hour Waiting Periods)

    Status and Roll Call

    LD 2086: An Act to Amend the Law Governing the Disposition of Forfeited Firearms (Machine Gun Re-Definition  Amendment) 

    Status and Roll Call

    LD 1696: An Act to Create a Civil Cause of Action for Persons Suffering Damages Arising from the Illegal Sale or Marketing of Firearm-related Products

    LD 1696 failed to pass and is dead. This is good news.


  • 05 Apr 2024 10:57 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Click Here to Read our heavily cited testimony.


  • 04 Apr 2024 2:22 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    The status of the bill, with applicable roll calls and submitted public hearing testimony can be found here.

    As of this date, please direct your attention to the Governor and urge her to veto this bill. 


  • 31 Mar 2024 5:04 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    On a Saturday afternoon on a holiday weekend, the public hearing for the Red Flag legislation proposal was scheduled.

    Click here to review the bill. 

    FRIDAY, April 5th at 9:00am at the Maine State House, Augusta

    Judiciary Committee Room 438

    Please see images below for how to submit testimony online or to sign up to testify via Zoom at https://www.mainelegislature.org/testimony/

    Online Submission:

    1. Go to website
    2. Choose Public Hearing
    3. Choose Judiciary Committee
    4. Choose Date: April 5, 2024
    5. Choose LD 2283

    Given the uncertainty of the weather at the end of the week, we would recommend submitting testimony online even if you plan on testifying in person.

    We anticipate the usual shortened testimony time, 2 minutes, but have not yet been made aware of how testimony will be handled.

    Your testimony does not have to be lengthy: just state who you are/where you live, your opposition, and a brief statement of why.



  • 29 Mar 2024 6:26 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Bill Language

    An Act to Enact the Crisis Intervention Order Act to Protect the Safety of the Public

    AKA - An Act to Remove Firearms without Due Process

  • 28 Mar 2024 5:49 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    The Governor's bill came out of the Judiciary Committee with an 8-6 Ought to Pass Majority Report.

    This is the content of the bill, with the amendments put forth by the Governor's Office. The image below is an important amendment that was made in committee by Representative Moonen who stated with his motion, " I think my concern is that there are private groups on social media that can have tens, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of members, but because it's a private group I'm concerned that the words 'to the general public' would not incorporate those groups, and so I want to strike those words so that anything that's broad cast to a very substantial number of people , rather than a direct message to one person, would be covered."



  • 27 Mar 2024 8:57 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Please find below important updates on the following:

    • Gun Bills Work Session 3/27
    • Status of Ethics Complaint
    • SAFER Course Back Online
    • Front Porch Politics with Tim Boyum: a post-Lewiston Shooting documentary that President Laura Whitcomb and Gun Rights Activist Robert Duhaime participated in entitled "Guns: United in Grief, Divided on Solutions"
    • The Last Line of Defense: Why Guns are Necessary to Preserve Liberty Forum in Waterville Maine on April 13th.


    Gun Bills Work Session #3:

    We fully anticipate that anti-gun Legislators will try and insert a full "Red Flag" law as an amendmen. We also received word of a new amendment to the Governor's Bill (see below) ahead of tomorrow's anticipated vote.

    Work Session #3

    Wednesday, March 27, 2024 at 1:00 PM

    State House, Room 438


    LD 2238: An Act to Address Gun Violence in Maine by Requiring a Waiting Period for Certain Firearm Purchases

    Bill language can be found here

    LD 2224 (GOVERNOR'S BILL) "An Act to Strengthen Public Safety by Improving Maine's Firearm Laws and Mental Health System"

    Original Bill language can be found here.  

    **The latest amendments from the Governor's office, as of this hour, can be found here. **

    As previously outlined, as it stands now the Governor's Bill would allow a backdoor way to try and enforce Universal Background Checks. 

    LD 2086: An Act to Amend the Law Governing the Disposition of Forfeited Firearms WITH Sponsor Amendment to Change the Definition of Machine Gun

    The Machine Gun Amendment cannot be found on maine.gov, but it can be found here.  Bill language can be found here

    Status of Ethics Complaint:

    As we shared with you last week, we filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission regarding Senator Carney and other anti-gun legislator's meeting with a representative of the ATF behind closed doors. We submitted the complaint at approximately 12:50pm on Thursday, March 21st. At 5:05pm the same day we received notice, with Senator Carney carbon copied in the email, that the Commission had reviewed our complaint with their staff attorneys and found it did not fall within their jurisdiction and declined to move forward. We anticipated this result. 

    Regardless of this declination, we have achieved an enormous amount of press and have placed Senator Carney on notice - we are paying attention.

    We will continue as planned, having attained legal counsel, with Freedom of Access violation filings. We will also be looking at Federal Freedom of Information Act violations as well as violations of the Hatch Act

    Legislators need to know that we are watching and that we are prepared to act when the law is violated as they try to infringe on our rights.

    SAFER Course Back Online:

    Due to some server issues the SAFER Maine: Statewide Access to Firearms Education & Resources website was down for about a week. 

    The SAFER Course is just one example of how Gun Owners of Maine continues to demonstrate leadership in the area of Gun Safety. It continues to be used as a tool by many municipalities around the state, as well as the Maine State Police, for the issuance of concealed weapons permits. 

    Your membership dues, raffle ticket purchases, and donations all allow this course to continue. Thank you! 

    "Guns: United in Grief, Divided on Solutions"

    We were invited by Mr. Tim Boyum, a journalist with Spectrum Cable News, to participate in a documentary about the fabric of gun ownership in Maine following the tragedies in Lewiston in October of last year. 

    After a great deal of thought and looking into Mr. Boyum's previous work, we agreed that I (Laura) would interview with them, at A & G Shooting Supply in Fairfield, Maine. We know media inquiries can be risky, but not participating means we get no voice at all -and with an average viewership of 25 million, we wanted a voice. Others interviewed include a family member of a shooting victim and former Senator Mike Carpenter .

    They had also asked one of our members and Gun Rights Activist Robert Duhaime to participate and give his perspective. Initially, they stated that if a GOME representative would be willing to speak that they didn't need two members. I immediately deferred to Robert, feeling strongly that his unique perspective and knowledge, paired with his knowledge of firearms, would be a worthy addition to their program.

    They wound up interviewing us both. We have only seen the trailer, but are sharing with you the viewing opportunity of the full special. It is scheduled to air Wednesday, March 27th at 8:30pm. If you are a Spectrum Cable or Internet customer you can view it automatically for free. If not, it can be viewed later that evening or the following day on their website (also free) 

    The Trailer can be viewed here (Twitter/X - no account needed to view) and here (Facebook).

    Laura


    The Last Line of Defense: Why Guns are Necessary to Preserve Liberty Forum

    Laura Whitcomb and Andee Reardon (GOME Board Member and State Director for Women for Gun Rights ), along with Maine State Representative Katrina Smith and NRA Firearms instructor Bruce Roscoe were invited to speak at the Kennebec County chapter of Turning Point USA's forum on gun rights.

    Turning Point USA is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that targets young people, generally ages 14-22, and encourages them to participate in various causes, one of the main points being Second Amendment Advocacy. 

    Because we encourage the next generation of Mainers to be involved in advocating for their gun rights, we thought we'd share this educational opportunity. While their main audience is young people, all are invited and welcome. See the image below for more details



  • 21 Mar 2024 6:57 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    GOME President Laura Whitcomb discusses closed-door meeting on GHRT: Listen Here

    Maine PBN: Maine Democrats meet privately with ATF official as work continues on gun safety proposals

    Portland Press Herald: Maine Democrats meet privately with ATF official as advocates work to build support for gun reforms

    Bangor Daily News: Maine Democrats meet behind closed doors with ATF official

    NRA-ILA: Bloomberg Tries to Buy Maine (Again), Secret ATF Meetings, and More

    This is the timeline of events regarding the fabric of gun legislation in Maine in the last 5 months since the shooting in Lewiston.

    After the shooting in Lewiston, before Robert Card was even found, anti-gun legislators were calling for restrictions on law abiding citizens.

    We’ve had legislation submitted from voluntarily giving up your right to own a firearm, to redefining a machine gun, expanding background checks, and placing a 72 hour waiting period on receiving a firearm who has already passed a background check. There were also calls for amendments to the submitted bills to include a ban on “assault weapons”

    Included in these requests are changes to current law surrounding protective custody warrants and weapons restrictions orders, commonly known as the yellow flag law which was submitted by Governor Mills.

    These bills have been heard by the judiciary committee that is chaired by Senator Carney and Representative Moonen. They were assigned here despite it being very public knowledge that Senator Carney is not only a member of the gun safety caucus, but is a member of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, having received an award from them for her work to pass anti-gun rights laws in our state.

    Going into the work session on March 13th we had gotten word that there was not going to be a vote on that date. We firmly believe that this is because the chairs of the committee did not have the votes to pass these anti-rights pieces of legislation and were still working to get the support they needed. It was then made known to us that there was a movement in the House to amend the Governor’s bill to a full red flag law –which Commissioner of Public Safety, Michael Sauschuck went on record at the public hearing stating that Governor Mills’ intention was to strengthen the current yellow flag law and did not want to change Maine law to a “full red flag law”.

    It is our opinion that if the Governor wanted to submit a different piece of legislation she would have done so.

    Now we have heard the testimony during The Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston. We have heard their conclusions: had current law been followed this tragedy could have been avoided. Following the findings,  The Bangor Daily news had headlines such as “Investigators hammer police for not taking Robert Card’s guns before Lewiston shooting”

    This flies in the face of every single piece of gun legislation being pushed in Augusta and now anti-gun legislators are scrambling to get these bills passed. A representative from the ATF was slated to appear before the Judiciary Committee yesterday to give testimony on the NICS system, which stands for National Instant Criminal Background Check System, to help the committee make informed decisions on these bills. This representative then decided they could not speak on the record, but would speak to the individual Democrat and Republican caucuses. Crying foul, the Republicans on the committee said they didn’t want to participate in an illegal meeting that was held behind closed doors, away from the eyes and ears of the public. Not to mention there is no guarantee that the information provided in each separate meeting will be the same! 

    One legislator informed me that when the information became available that the ATF cannot testify on the public record, asked for their contact information and was told that the only way a one-on-one meeting could be held was if it was scheduled by the chair of the committee and held at the time and place of the chair’s choosing via zoom.

    Legally if three or more members of the same committee hold a meeting it has to be public, and yesterday at least five democrat members of the Judiciary Committee participated in a meeting behind closed doors. See the law here

    Then, Senator Carney invited members of the Domestic Violence Coalition to do a special presentation before the committee, labeled an information session: firearms and Domestic violence, which was clearly anti-gun, then asked them to come back today for the second work session giving them FOUR opportunities to state their position before the committee. No such offer was made to any pro-gun group or individual. 

    Senator Carney is blatantly obvious in her desire to push anti-gun legislation. She is the chair of the committee that oversees laws pertaining to government transparency and is acting as the gatekeeper of information. Furthermore, Senate President Jackson is doing absolutely nothing to reign this in. It is an abuse of power. It is unethical, and Maine citizens need to be aware of it.

    Laura Whitcomb, President


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