How Maine’s Next Governor Will Impact Gun Rights

Maine is kind of a wacky state. It’s long been a very blue, very leftist kind of place. It’s also been vehemently pro-gun, at least up until the Lewiston shooting. That changed an awful lot. 

Since then, they’ve gone deep down the anti-gun rabbit hole, with few signs of coming out of it.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, was a surprisingly moderating influence on some of this, but she wasn’t exactly the NRA’s governor of the year, either. Now that she’s leaving office, though, there’s going to be someone else to make those decisions, and just who it is will have lasting ramifications for the state.

The implementation of Maine’s recently passed gun safety laws — a red flag referendum voters overwhelmingly approved and a 72-hour waiting period facing a legal challenge — would greatly differ depending on who the next governor is.

Democrat Hannah Pingree said she supports both laws, and detailed how she would implement the red flag law that the current governor, Janet Mills, opposed. Independent Rick Bennett said he would enforce both laws if the waiting period survives its legal challenge while Republican Bobby Charles said he opposes both measures.

Both the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, groups that are typically on opposing sides of most gun-related legislation, singled Pingree out as being the outlier on an issue that has become increasingly relevant for Maine since the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston.

“One of these candidates is not like the others,” Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, which endorsed Pingree in the gubernatorial race. “Only one of these candidates is actually aligned with where the Maine people have shown themselves to be, and the other two are not.”

Meanwhile, the Sportsman’s Alliance, which is involved in the legal challenge to the waiting period, gave the former Maine House of Representatives speaker an F-rating because she did not respond to the group’s questionnaire and “she’s made it very clear that she embraces her endorsement from the gun control community,” Executive Director David Trahan said.

“For us, that’s an easy choice,” he added. “You don’t want to participate, and you want to support all these gun control bills, then you’re going to get a bad grade from us.”

I mean, that last line seems obvious, and the idea that somehow Pingree is the outlier strikes me as a little weird. That’s where a lot of Maine Democrats have been.

But this is still a state that held leftward values while maintaining a strong belief in the Second Amendment for years. Did everyone become anti-gun, or were they shocked by Lewiston and are now over it? After all, something like a mass shooting in a state like Maine is going to rattle people. 2023 saw a jump of almost 300 percent over just two years earlier, largely due to Lewiston. 

Meanwhile, in 2025, without the red flag law that Pingree seems to think the state desperately needs, the state saw just 21 homicides. It had a homicide rate of just 1.5 per 100,000 people. Even if gun control is everything anti-gunners claim, which it’s not, it seems pretty clear that Maine doesn’t need it.

Unfortunately, for Maine, it looks like she’s a lock to replace Mills.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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