At the height of an opiate crisis, let’s take away their health insurance and instead give 18-year-olds a loaded concealed handgun and some marijuana. What could possibly go wrong?

L.D. 44, if passed by Maine’s 128th Legislature and signed by Gov. Paul LePage, will lower from 21 to 18 the age at which a person can carry a concealed handgun. At the polls, Mainers decided pot will be legal, and Republicans across the country are vying to repeal Obamacare, which would result in about 75,000 people losing their health insurance in this state, including, most likely, low-income young people. Treatment for addiction is expensive and virtually impossible to obtain without health insurance. Without treatment, addicts often turn to crime to feed their addiction. And handguns are tools for crime.

Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, speaks at a Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee hearing in 2015. Staff photo by Joe Phelan

Most 18-year-olds are seniors in high school. Many do not yet know how to do laundry. Legislation enabling them to carry around a concealed loaded handgun is as good an idea as raising their speed limit on Interstate 295 at rush hour. It’s a bad answer to our manufactured crisis of ridiculous levels of gun violence. Again we are on the gerbil wheel of NRA-speak and can expect the same tortured logic. True lovers of liberty are free to be shot. Strengthening laws makes us weak. The mass shooting of innocent children is inevitable.

The sponsor of L.D. 44 is what some might call a “fresh face” in politics: a rising star – a young gun – and maybe he is. Only time will tell. As a first-term senator last session, Eric Brakey successfully carried the water for the NRA to get Maine’s first “constitutional carry” law passed for those 21 and older, so maybe he sees this year’s bill as icing on the proverbial cake. He’s “finishing the job” so bigger, better work will come, along with media attention and cocktail parties. No doubt young “hunters” in his Auburn district were clamoring for the right to carry their Smith and Wessons and Glocks under blaze orange hoodies with their Game Boys.

Ultimately, though, whether L.D. 44 passes has less to do with the bill’s sponsor than it does with the rest of us. If we want to reduce gun violence we can. Nothing in the Second Amendment says the United States has to be the leader of thoughts and prayers about senseless gun-related deaths. We do not have to accept over 750 children being killed by guns, out of roughly 13,000 deaths last year by gun violence. From 2005 through 2015, 71 Americans were killed by terrorists on U.S. soil, while 301,797 were killed by gun violence that disproportionately affects black men. One in five kids are without enough to eat in Maine, while kids younger than 3 have gotten ahold of guns and shot someone at least 59 times this year in America.

Republicans who complain about “outside special interests” controlling factions of the left need to look in the mirror. If an 18-year-old is not mature enough to have a beer with the snack his mother tucked in his backpack, why are we giving him a loaded gun to hide in his pants?

The problem in part is party capture. The Republican Party is beholden to the gun lobby, and it controls the state Senate and the Blaine House. Unless some of Maine’s Republicans are independent enough to buck the party line and risk becoming a bullseye, it will be up to Democrats to stop the bleeding. But this is not complicated. The gun lobby cares as much about preserving Maine’s hunting culture and “freedom” as drug dealers care about pain. Billions of dollars of profit is made off the gun industry, and its lobbyists are expertly trained to spin the threads of blood-moneyed legislation into imaginary flags that don’t tread on you or me, just kill or seriously injure us.

To say no to L.D. 44 is the tough love Maine kids need, but just like we can expect most Republicans to let us down when it comes to rational gun laws, we also can expect a handful of Democrats to be seduced by NRA money and jawboning about alleged liberty interests and “hunting” rights. Republicans and Democrats are susceptible to caving in the face of common sense. These legislators must be held accountable too, for not doing what they can to reduce gun violence. Democrats hiding behind rural districts or conservative constituencies must be reminded that the overwhelming majority of people want more gun safety laws passed, not fewer.

Democrats who enable the NRA in Maine should be held accountable because they can stop the wave of NRA bills being passed in Augusta since LePage took office. What’s the use of a muscle unless one is willing to flex it now and again? The speaker of the House should reward NRA appeasement by any Democratic member with swift and effective political consequence. No NRA placater should chair a legislative committee or otherwise have opportunity to exert influence on a process that has allowed guns and senseless gun violence to proliferate at rates that are absurd. Votes should have consequences.

L.D. 44 is not about jobs, the economy, freedom or the Second Amendment. It is a bill custom tailored for the gun industry, by the gun industry, to increase already-staggering profits, and it will increase incidents of gun violence. Its passage is not the way life should be.

Cynthia Dill is a civil rights lawyer and former state senator. She can be contacted at:

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Twitter: dillesquire

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