AUGUSTA, Maine — Even if you don’t agree with President Barack Obama’s implicit call for stronger gun laws as a response to mass shootings, something he said after one in 2015 rings true — the public’s responses, including his, are routine.
After 49 people died at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday in the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, the gun-rights National Rifle Association’s social media accounts went silent on the incident and their rivals, Everytown for Gun Safety, called for tighter gun laws.
In Maine, the context is different, with those groups squaring off on a background check referendum on Maine’s 2016 ballot.
Federal law mandates checks when guns are bought from federally licensed dealers, but the Maine proposal would add to that by requiring them for private sales and at all gun shows.
Everytown, a group linked to Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has given $3.6 million to the Maine effort by late May. The NRA is expected to lead opposition.
The Orlando shooting will reignite America’s gun debate, but the past shows us that it probably won’t affect the Maine campaign for two main reasons.
Background checks poll well, but other polling has shown that mass shootings don’t have much lasting impact on public opinion about gun laws.
Not much polls better nationally than background checks: Everytown points to data showing 90 percent support across the country and a poll earlier this year in Maine pegged it at 84 percent.
But adding to Maine’s gun background check mandate figures to be harder at the ballot box, where only one state, Washington, has passed background checks. It won with 59 percent of votes in 2014, and Maine and Nevada are next on Everytown’s list after that win.
However, the Pew Research Center has found that national support for gun control hasn’t changed much after mass shootings in 2012, 2011 and 2007.
The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, was investigated three times by the FBI for extremist Islamic leanings. But he was a licensed security officer who passed background checks to work for his company.
David Trahan, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, which opposes the referendum, said while background checks would “maybe” have had an impact in other situations, they would have “done zero” to stop Mateen.
However, David Farmer, a spokesman for the Everytown-backed effort in Maine, said “no law will stop every criminal or hate-filled person who’s determined to do evil.”
“But we will work alongside the majority of Mainers who know that common-sense measures like background checks absolutely make it harder for dangerous people to get guns,” he said.
Past mass shootings haven’t led to gun law changes in Maine, which has actually loosened them in the last few years.
Several gun control proposals have hit the Maine Legislature in recent years, including in 2013, after 20 students and six educators were killed at an elementary school in Connecticut.
But none made it into law, including a bill that would have promoted background checks that passed the Legislature but couldn’t survive a veto from Republican Gov. Paul LePage. A federal background check expansion also was defeated in Congress.
Gun-rights activists got a win in Maine that year, when LePage signed a bill making concealed-handgun permit data confidential after a public-access request from the Bangor Daily News. In 2015, the Legislature got rid of the permit requirement.
This may have all been aided by Maine’s safety. While America outpaces the rest of the developed world in gun violence, Maine had the had the fifth-lowest rate of firearm use in crimes in the country at 14.2 percent in 2011, according to the University of Southern Maine.
But Farmer pointed to Maine’s high rate of homicides linked to domestic abuse, calling enhanced background checks a way to keep guns out of the hands of “criminals, domestic abusers and people with severe mental illness.”
However, Trahan said the Orlando shooting shouldn’t be turned into “a cheap political debate,” saying Everytown jumped too quickly to call for enhanced measures on it, and “we’ll have plenty of time to debate this before November.”
We’re not sure what will happen in November, but if the referendum passes in Maine, the Orlando shooting may not have much to do with it and the national debate will rage on.