Maine’s Hunting Legacy: A Victory

On November 3, 2021 Maine voters approved an historic state constitutional amendment that established a constitutional Right to Food. Not unexpectedly, a debate ensued about the word “harvest,” which is used in the language of the new amendment.

The debate focused on the question: Does that constitutional word “harvest” include recreational hunting? Obviously, those of us in the hunting community, who place great value on our hunting legacy in Maine, and our right to hunt, assumed that, yes, Maine now has within its state constitution a proviso that does safeguard hunting. A number of other states have in the past few years taken action to embed a similar right to hunt in their state constitutions: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, and Kansas. Florida voters will vote on such a provision this year. In Vermont, the right to hunt has been included in its state constitution since 1777.

But all is not gold that glitters. In an effort to thwart a legal effort by a Readfield couple to use the Right to Food amendment to overturn Maine’s ban on Sunday hunting, the state of Maine argued that, in fact, the new amendment did not grant constitutional protection to hunt in our state!

Although the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled against the Readfield couple, and held that the Sunday hunting ban was not contrary to the amendment, the court, to its credit, held that, indeed, the amendment DOES protect legal hunting. In other words, the hunting community was right: for purposes of the constitutional amendment, as voted by Maine citizens in the 2021 referendum, the constitutional word “harvest” does include hunting.

If you are a hunter, or if you simply agree that hunting is a worthy legacy, this decision by the Maine high court is a landmark ruling! Break out the champagne and take the time to thank the Readfield couple, Virginia and Joel Parker, without whose valiant efforts, the unanswered legal question would have lingered.

The Parkers fought hard to defeat the Sunday hunting ban, and Maine remains one of only two states in the country to close down hunting on Sunday. If past is prologue, we have not heard the last of this issue, which crops up almost annually in the legislative halls of Augusta.

No doubt the Parkers are disappointed by the court decision, but, whether they foresaw this silver lining or not, they left a mark and made a difference, even in defeat.

In the context of this court decision, which partly rebukes the state’s position that hunting was not protected by the food amendment, a tangential question remains unaddressed or unanswered. Since the Parker’s suit challenged the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s Sunday hunting ban, and since the high court ruled that the Right to Food amendment does not protect illegal hunting, why wasn’t this the more narrow focus of the state’s legal argument? Apparently, the state adopted a sweeping legal offense and sought to uphold the Sunday hunting ban by arguing that the constitutional word “harvest” does not include hunting at all.

Wittingly or unwittingly, the state attorney general and our fisheries and wildlife folks, were party to a legal position that could have opened a Pandora’s box, and left our hunting legacy with no constitutional safeguards whatsoever. Unless we are missing something, the state was so eager to protect the Sunday hunting ban that it was willing to expose the constitutional protection of hunting to a stunning defeat.

Focus on fixing the issues, not failed gun control

Justin Davis is the Maine NRA State Director and Laura Whitcomb is the President of Gun Owners of Maine.

In the wake of the tragedy in Lewiston, Mainers are seeking answers and meaningful solutions. Knee-jerk demands for gun control were the loudest and most persistent calls in the initial moments; however, as time moves on, we’re seeing the root causes of the senseless violence come to light. One thing remains clear in this situation, and others like it, there are chronic system failures and a lack of resources. Maine needs to prioritize mental health treatment and our law enforcement community, who are both on the frontlines of protecting our communities.

To most Mainers, it is clear these issues need to be addressed. There is a critical need for a holistic approach to public safety. This can be accomplished through common sense solutions such as investing in comprehensive mental health care reform and providing the resources that our law enforcement community desperately needs. These are not new concepts but the same policy solu- tions the gun-rights advocates have already been advocating for in Maine. These policy solutions address real pitfalls in the state that led us to the tragedy in October.

This approach differs greatly from progressive anti-gun groups that are running a slate of cookiecutter gun control legislation that appears to be more focused on serving their national agenda than the people of Maine. Even while the scene in Lewiston was still active, national political figures used Maine’s tragedy without knowing, or caring about, the facts. From blaming

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Republicans for voting down waiting periods (despite it being an overwhelming bipartisan vote), to calling for universal background checks, these politicians wasted no time to push their agenda.

As more facts have come out, and Maine’s independent commission continues its investigation, gun owners have hoped that these calls for failed out-of-state gun control would subside. However, gun control groups and lawmakers are doubling down on a slate of gun control proposals, including attempts to redefine commonly owned firearms, confiscating firearms without due process, implementing universal background checks, requiring waiting periods on all purchases and transfers of firearms, creating gun registries, banning magazines that hold more than five rounds, and calling on private businesses to stop selling semi-automatic firearms.

Gun owners have every right to question how these proposals fit the fact pattern of the Lewiston shooter and if they are only steppingstones to even larger gun control efforts.

In a press conference late last month, leading gun control lawmakers admitted these bills are not solely focused on what would have prevented the tragedy in Lewiston, but rather focused on passing further restrictive gun policies. In hearings last week, Maine Gun Safety Coalition activists said that this is “only the beginning” of the gun control they want to see implemented and demanded even further action.

Mainers from Kittery to Madawaska have voiced their concerns that the extreme policies being proposed do not address the underlying issues in Maine, would disarm law-abiding citizens, and are out-of-step with our proud gun-owning heritage. Why are we focused on turning otherwise law-abiding Mainers into criminals for the simple act of owning a legally purchased firearm? Universal background checks, which were recently rejected by Maine voters at the ballot box, restrict the ability for law-abiding Mainers to lend a firearm to a family member. Waiting periods would require victims of abuse in need of urgent self-defense to wait days before receiving their lawfully purchased firearm.