A US federal judge in Maine granted a temporary injunction on Thursday to pause the implementation of a gun law that requires 72 hours to pass before the purchase of firearms can be completed.
Case file: https://wgme.com/resources/pdf/df042dff-7f87-444e-9961-d535d7a4286c-InjunctionGranted.pdf
Frankly I would have it go further, require a full background check to be recently completed, expand it it to a week, cap ammo volumes, enable red flag provisions, and entirely ban full classes of high capacity and high cyclic rate weapons.
Your comparison to a simple tool or invoking of a self preservation is absurd on its face to the point of not being worth proper answering. I’ve handled guns virtually all my life, took a state safety course at a around 10 years old that’s marked on my licence 30+ years later, and take a fair pride in picking off a dime size target at back yard range lengths.
Introducing a minimal delay on the flow of weapons into the already saturated hands of the public is a pittance of a concession if it stops even a single person from go out after a drunken fight and decide to shoot someone, or an isolated depressed individual to say this is the night to die, or to keep another of the far too frequent school shootings from happening. You provide this picture of a walking arsenal coming in and needing to get yet another gun right this moment as though they where an addict needing a fix as some argument against the law.
This premise is the proposed “compelling state interest” I discussed in my last comment.
This law isn’t going to die from lack of a “compelling state interest”. This law is going to die from a lack of “narrowly tailored”, because nobody has made that argument.
The complaint you present is that there should be several exceptions to the waiting period. If you believe that phrasing it as cooling off is a problem then the simple solution is to say all purchases of a firearm have a waiting period, no exceptions. Crisis of specificity resolved.
Of course the go to argument then is ‘but my 2A’ at which point you end up down some rabbit hole where people argue they should be able to own a fully automatic field gun if they want to because reasons…
Yeah, I’ve addressed this. The “interest” that I accepted as “compelling” only applies to first time gun buyers, who don’t have access to other guns during the waiting period.
To meet strict scrutiny, you need to demonstrate both the compelling government interest and the narrow tailoring. If you want me to accept that “no exceptions” is narrowly tailored, you’re going to have to show me a compelling government interest that applies to both current gun owners and first time buyers.
Your arguments don’t seem to demonstrate comprehension of “strict scrutiny”. That is almost certainly going to be applied to this law. If you want to keep this law, your arguments are going to need to meet the strict scrutiny standard.
Tbf
I highly doubt a drunken and bloody person is completing a sale even if it’s legal (and I don’t think it is). If they can wait until they sober up, take a shower, and then still want to go to the store the next day, three more days isn’t likely to assuage their anger, and even if it does then the next time the situation arises the gun is in their posession already.
Guns are the most frequent choice for men, sure, but not even for women (that would be intentional poisoning last I checked). As such any sufficiently motivated man can just go the woman’s route which is technically even more convenient since everyone has a bottle of tylenol on hand. Or, guns also aren’t even the most effective, and I hesitate to say what is lest someone depressed see it and they decide it’s a good idea, but suffice it to say it is located within 5mi of your house right now (in most countries) and it isn’t guns nor is it something that can be remedied. Furthermore 72hr isn’t sufficient time for such an individual to seek professional help, may not even be enough time to get them to their first appointment, any such individual will have the same scenario as above, in which while they may be prevented from suicide “tomorrow,” once the purchase completes they’ll have it for next time. In fact, CA found that risk of suicide by firearm is highest in the week after the purchase completes and stays high for months after.
This is probably the least effective, these kids plan these shootings for months. They aren’t saying “mommy, can you drive through Ammu-Nation on the way to school this morning? I’ve been good all week!” and picking up their arsenal. There more than likely is at least three days from point of purchase to time of crime just due to logistics in most shootings (counting purchased-by-shooter guns, stolen-from-daddy of course is longer than three days from purchase to crime, wouldn’t be fair to count it as it would artificially inflate the numbers in my argument’s favor.)
In fact speaking of “time to crime,” as the ATF calls the time from purchase until the gun shows up at a crime scene, the average time to crime of guns in the US is eleven years. No state has an eleven year waiting period.
But think for a second about a woman escaping her abusive husband and taking the kids to her mom’s. It may be beneficial if she knows her abusive husband is armed for her to buy a gun of her own as he’s clearly dangerous (and taking one of “his” could get her imprisoned and give him the kids, not an option). If she can’t get it for three days and he knows that, that could give the armed abusive husband just one more advantage at wholesale family annihilation (ala The Haight Family) by denying the victim the tools (and therefore ability) to defend themselves from harm. Unfortunately, if she calls the cops before he gets there, even if she has a reasonable suspicion he’s on the way, they will not do anything “until a crime has been committed” and therefore she’s unfortunately left in a position where it may be necessary to do so.
Not only are artificial waiting periods ineffective for their stated goals, the hindrance could also actively prevent those that do have a sudden need to acquire a firearm from protecting themselves from harm.