Attorney General Knudsen leads 28-state coalition against unconstitutional waiting-period law
HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a 28-state coalition supporting a challenge to Maine’s unconstitutional waiting-period law which requires gun buyers to wait 72 hours before taking possession of a firearm after purchase.
The amicus brief, filed in the case of Beckwith v. Frey, asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Court to affirm the district court’s decision halting Maine’s waiting-period law that went into effect in 2024. The district court properly found that the right to acquire firearms is covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text and that Maine’s proposed historical analogues—licensing and intoxication laws—flunked Bruen’s inquiry.
The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, that courts must determine whether the Second Amendment’s plain text and historical understanding cover an individual’s conduct. In the brief, Attorney General Knudsen argues that Maine’s waiting-period law fails Bruen’s inquiry because Maine failed to produce any evidence of historical waiting-period laws during the country’s Founding or Reconstruction era.
Maine countered that the court should take a more nuanced approach to viewing its waiting-period law due to unprecedented societal concerns involving dramatic technological changes. It argues that the waiting-period law addresses a problem that did not exist at the founding—“the impulsive use of firearms to commit homicides and suicides.” But human impulsivity is not a new societal problem, and Maine fails to point to any rapid advancements in gun technology that warrant Bruen’s “more nuanced approach.”
But even if that “more nuanced approach” were appropriate, Maine’s historical evidence—licensing and intoxication laws—is not “relevantly similar” to its waiting-period law because those laws include conditions that a person could satisfy to avoid the law’s burden, while the waiting-period law applies whether or not a person is dangerous.
“Maine failed to carry its burden to show that its waiting-period law is ‘part of the historical tradition that de limits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms,’” Attorney General Knudsen wrote. “The district court found that Beckwith was likely to succeed on the merits of her Second Amendment claim because the waiting-period law ‘employs no standard at all to justify disarming individuals.’”
Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the Arizona Legislature joined the brief led by Attorney General Knudsen.
Click here to read the brief.
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