The Michael Bloomberg-funded group Moms Demand Action filed in August for a Maine initiative that would require background checks on anyone purchasing a gun from a private seller or non-licensed sellers. Last week, the Maine secretary of state accepted the application, which gives the group approval to begin collecting the 61,123 signatures necessary to add a voter referendum to the November 2016 ballot.
Like all of Bloomberg’s proposals, this effort will do nothing to deter criminals or stop crimes. It will only serve to make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to obtain guns for protection. But it won’t move forward without a fight.
“Universal background checks are nothing more than a fancy way to get gun registration in the state of Maine,” says Shane Belanger of Gun Owners of Maine. “Bloomberg already failed to block Constitutional Carry, and now we’re going to send him home with another failure and a whole lot less money.”
