Maine Quietly Restores Reciprocity With Several States

Maine has always been kind of a weird state. Despite being as blue as they come, it was pretty pro-gun for a lot of years, even rejecting red flag laws in a voter referendum. Folks there liked their guns and they weren't interested in restrictions.

Then Lewiston happened, and things changed, at least to some degree.

Somewhere along the way, Maine seemingly severed reciprocity ties with several other states by removing their names from the state's list. Now, they've been restored.

Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota and Tennessee are back on the Maine State Police list of states whose concealed carry permits Maine recognizes. The agency still has not told me why they were removed in the first place.

Last month I covered Maine Quietly Drops Permit Reciprocity With Four States That Still Honor Its Permit, and Nobody Has Said Why after those four states disappeared from the reciprocity page with no explanation. I contacted the Maine State Police Weapons and Professional Licensing Unit for a statement, and the office replied that it would look into it. I never heard back. The four states have since been added back to the list.

Nothing in Maine law changed when the states were dropped. Maine’s recognition is set by state law, not by a negotiated agreement with each state. The law requires Maine to honor permits from states that honor Maine’s permit. When I covered the removal, all four states still honored Maine’s permit, which is why taking them off the list never matched the law.

Basically, Maine officials dropped the states from the public list, even if reciprocity was still there because of state law, and then when someone noticed, they quietly put them back and hoped no one would notice.

Only someone did.

I honestly don't know what the deal was beyond keeping folks from those states who visit Maine from carrying a firearm. While groups like USA Carry will track reciprocity, smart people tend to double-check what these groups say before trusting it completely. After all, if you screw up, it isn't the website that will be held responsible in a court. That'll be you.

But in the case of Maine, these aren't negotiated agreements, as noted above. The legislature voted on reciprocity and approved it. The governor at the time signed it into law. The state police can't just decide that someone from Arkansas can't carry a firearm in Maine anymore. That's not how it works.

Did someone get wires crossed, or were they trying to pull a fast one?

The answer is clear as mud, in part because no one got back with USA Carry's Luke McCoy.

Whether it was an innocent mistake or malicious shenanigans, the truth is that no one lost reciprocity with Maine, even if Maine's official list suggested otherwise. I'm hoping that no one got jammed up over it due to some officer checking the state police website and not seeing Tennessee or one of the other states listed there, only to make an arrest that never should have been made.

I imagine it didn't happen because, well, if it had, I think we'd have been covering it for a while, but I could be wrong.

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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