South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has joined 27 other states in a legal effort to support Second Amendment rights. This coalition submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, challenging a Maine law that mandates a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases.
“This same court has already ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees, so Maine’s restrictive law should be thrown out,” Attorney General Wilson stated. “I will always fight to protect the Second Amendment, the Constitution, and the rule of law.”
In April 2024, Maine enacted legislation requiring a three-day waiting period before purchasing firearms. Several residents contested this law, claiming it infringes on their Second Amendment rights and sought a preliminary injunction from a district court. The court granted this injunction, asserting that “the acquisition of firearms is covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
The brief filed by Attorney General Wilson and his counterparts argues that “Maine failed to carry its burden to show that its waiting-period law is ‘part of the historic tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms,’” further stating that Maine’s regulation “employs no standard at all to justify disarming individuals.”
This initiative was led by Montana and includes attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia Wyoming as well as participation from Arizona’s legislature.
