Maine: City of Portland Illegally Classifies Gun Shops as “Non-Essential”
Friday, April 17, 2020
Our Second Amendment rights are being threatened. The City of Portland needs to hear from you now!
In response to COVID-19, the Portland Mayor and City Council adopted Order No. 156-19/20 on April 14th, which replaced the list of essential businesses previously authorized by the city. The order stated that "Gun shops shall not be considered an essential business or service within the City of Portland."
Not only does this order directly conflict with the new list of essential businesses published on April 3rd by the Mills administration, but it blatantly conflicts with Maine’s preemption law. State preemption prevents local governments from enacting their gun control ordinances and creating a confusing patchwork of local laws. Law-abiding citizens should enjoy the same rights, regardless of where they reside. Maine statutes have no exception for local government acting in an emergency – which means the City of Portland is blatantly violating the state preemption law by classifying gun shops as non-essential businesses and ordering them to close under their new order.
Please act now and call on Portland Mayor Kate Snyder and the Portland City Council to correct this egregious error and make firearm dealers essential businesses!
It is unfortunate that in these uncertain times, an elected official would limit the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise our inherent right to self-defense. Firearm dealers are essential to exercising this right!
This is breaking and developing news, and as more details become available, we will update NRA members further. Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org/coronavirus.
On August 12, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) sent a letter to U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Brian Babin (R-Texas) reiterating what gun rights ...
It’s been a long time since Australia had relatively sensible gun laws. While national regulations did not really come into play until the 1990s, the states and territories began imposing severe restrictions on lawful gun owners ...
FAIRFAX, Va. — The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) todaylaunched its first-ever national bus tour, the 2026 NRA’s Gun Bus Battleground Tour, a more than two month, 13-state campaign to energize and ...
There has been a certain amount of anticipation while the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) analyzed the available crime data for last year. The speculation among many was that the report would be, not just ...
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico granted summary judgment holding New Mexico’s 7-day waiting period law unconstitutional in Ortega v. Grisham—a case brought by the National Rifle Association and Mountain States ...
On August 12, we reported on an important development in the ongoing litigation over the National Firearms Act (NFA) filed by multiple plaintiffs in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. These included, ...
In another major victory for the National Rifle Association and law-abiding gun owners, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas today held that the National Firearms Act’s registration and approval requirements for ...
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the "lobbying" arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.