Maine Congressman Jared Golden stands in front of Senator Susan Collins to oppose assault weapons

Echo report published in the Boston Globe by Samantha J. Gross:
"‘The time has now come’: Maine congressman Jared Golden reverses course on assault weapons ban."

LEWISTON, Maine- Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat, pulled a rare move in politics on Thursday night: He publicly reversed course, admitting he was wrong on an important issue. In this case, his stance on assault weapons.

In 2022, Golden was one of two Democrats to vote against raising the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. Golden and four other Democrats also joined Republicans in voting against a bill banning assault weapons in 2022.

In the wake of the deadly shootings in his hometown of Lewiston, Maine, the Marine Corps veteran on Thursday called on Congress to ban the weapons.

Golden said: I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war like the assault rifle he used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure. Which is why I now call on the United States congress to ban assault rifles.

”I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war, like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime,” he said. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure.”

Golden, who lives in Lewiston and represents Maine’s vast Second Congressional District, said there is “a false confidence that our community was above” a mass shooting. He added that because of his determination to protect his daughter, wife, and his home community, he is now opposed to what he called “deadly weapons of war.”

“Sometimes things happen that bring your worst nightmares to life. Yesterday, this is what happened,” he said. “I will do everything I have to support this community’s recovery.”

Golden’s district, which he first won in 2018, is the largest east of the Mississippi River, the second-most rural in the country, and the only slice of New England where President Donald Trump won an electoral vote in 2016. Trump carried the district again in 2020, earning one of the state’s four electoral votes.

Maine Senator Susan Collins, on the contrary, doubled down on her stance against an expansion of the assault weapons ban.

Collins, who voted against expanding the assault weapons ban after the 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators, said she has not changed her stance given the Lewiston shootings.

While she supported the original ban, the proposal to extend it “was based not on legality, and more on how they looked,” she told reporters at a news conference at Lewiston City Hall on Thursday night.

”I did not think that that was appropriate,” she said. “We do have a Second Amendment in our country. And Maine has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country and has a long heritage of responsible gun ownership and a very low rate of violence.”

She noted that she was a co-author of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which provided funding for red and yellow “flag laws,” and for mental health clinics.

She added that she was the lead Republican sponsor a bill that would ban bump stocks, which have the ability to turn a semi-automatic into a fully automatic machine gun.

“Certainly there’s always more that can be done,” she said.