A group of Maine gun-rights advocates asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases, four months after a federal appeals court revived the law passed after the 2023 Lewiston mass shooting.
The 90-page petition filed Tuesday asks the justices to decide whether the Democratic-led waiting period, which applies even to buyers who instantly pass a background check, violates the Second Amendment.
The case has swung between courts for more than a year. A federal district judge blocked the law in February 2025, ruling gun buyers were likely to win their constitutional challenge. But the Boston-based appeals court reversed that in April, finding the waiting period regulates the sale of firearms rather than the right to keep and bear them, and upholding it as a “presumptively lawful” condition on commercial sales.
Petitioners in the case include Andrea Beckwith, who owns the East Coast School of Safety, and state Rep. James White, R-Guilford, a gunsmith. They’re represented by Erin Murphy of Clement & Murphy, a prominent litigator at the conservative-led Supreme Court.
The petitioners argue the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruling created a split among courts, noting the 10th Circuit struck down a similar New Mexico law and the 9th Circuit has called such delays “presumptively unconstitutional.”
“Nothing in our Nation’s historical tradition supports that kind of paternalistic prophylaxis-on-prophylaxis,” the petitioners wrote, “which is at odds with the very premise of the Second Amendment.”
The office of Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, has defended the law by citing evidence that a three-day cooling-off period can stop impulsive acts of gun violence.