Maine’s 72-Hour Gun Wait Heads to a Supreme Court Conference

Last updated October 2026 · By Nick Hall, who reads Supreme Court dockets line by line and has covered the New Mexico and Minnesota waiting period fights

Quick take: The Supreme Court will look at the Beckwith petition, the challenge to Maine’s 72-hour wait to take home a gun you have already bought, at its private conference on October 16. That is a vote on whether to hear the case, not a ruling on the law. If the justices take it, the answer reaches every state with a waiting period.

• What happened: The Court distributed Beckwith v. Frey, No. 26-258, on September 30, 2026 for its October 16 conference, after Maine waived its right to respond.
• Why it matters: The First Circuit upheld Maine’s 72-hour wait, while the Tenth Circuit ruled against New Mexico’s seven-day version, and the petition asks the justices to settle that split.
• What’s next: At conference the justices can grant review, deny it, ask Maine for a response, or carry the petition over to a later conference.
• Who to watch: Montana and 23 other state attorneys general, joined by the leaders of Arizona’s legislature, filed a brief asking the Court to take the case.

Plenty of Second Amendment petitions end in a one-line denial, and some sit through conference after conference before they do. This one arrives with a circuit split, a sympathetic set of plaintiffs, and a state that did not file a word in its own defense. We pulled the docket and read every brief on it so you don’t have to.

Table of Contents

What the Beckwith Petition Asks the Supreme Court

Maine’s law is one sentence long where it counts. Under 25 M.R.S. § 2016, “A seller may not knowingly deliver a firearm to a buyer pursuant to an agreement sooner than 72 hours after the agreement.” A seller who breaks it faces a civil fine of $200 to $500, and $500 to $1,000 for a repeat violation.

The petition, filed August 25, 2026 by Erin E. Murphy of Clement & Murphy, frames the question this way: “Whether forcing law-abiding citizens who have already passed a background check to wait out a multi-day cooling-off period before taking possession of a firearm violates the Second Amendment.”

That framing matters. The challengers are not attacking background checks. They are attacking the three days that run after the check comes back clean, which the petition says the law does not use for “any sort of investigation” at all.

The plaintiffs are a deliberate mix. Andrea Beckwith is a domestic violence survivor who runs East Coast School of Safety and trains women leaving abusive partners. Adam Hendsbee owns A&G Shooting in Fairfield, where, according to the petition, a woman being harassed by a stalker passed her background check instantly, paid for a gun, and had to go home without it. Nancy Coshow, James White of J. White Gunsmithing and TLC Gunsmithing and Armory round out the list.

How the First Circuit Saved Maine’s Waiting Period

The law took effect on August 9, 2024, and it followed the October 2023 Lewiston shooting, in which the First Circuit’s opinion records that eighteen people were killed. Judge Lance E. Walker of the District of Maine blocked it with a preliminary injunction on February 13, 2025. In the petition’s account, he wrote that reading the law as anything other than a burden on keeping arms “requires the type of interpretative jui jitsu that would make Kafka blush.”

The First Circuit disagreed. In an April 3, 2026 opinion by Judge Aframe, joined by Judges Montecalvo and Thompson, the panel held that “laws regulating the purchase or acquisition of firearms do not target conduct” covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text. Because of that, the court never reached the historical analysis that Bruen requires.

The panel called the 72 hours “only a modest delay” and pointed out that federal law already lets a background check run that long. It concluded that the Act is “likely constitutional” and vacated the injunction.

Here is the premise check. That was a ruling on a preliminary injunction, not a final judgment, and with the injunction gone nothing in this case stops Maine from enforcing the wait today. If you buy a gun in Maine this week, you wait. Our Maine gun laws guide covers the rest of what applies when you do.

The Circuit Split at the Center of Beckwith v. Frey

New Mexico passed a seven-day cooling-off law within weeks of Maine’s. In Ortega v. Grisham the Tenth Circuit applied both steps of Bruen and held New Mexico’s law likely unconstitutional. The First Circuit’s own opinion cites that ruling in a footnote as the other side of the argument. The petition calls that square split “reason enough to grant certiorari.”

New Mexico never took its loss to the Supreme Court. The petition notes that the state chose not to seek review, which is why the New Mexico waiting period case never reached the justices.

And the pressure is coming from more directions than one. The petition counts 13 states plus the District of Columbia with a waiting period on the books, from three days in Maine to 30 in Minnesota, where the Justice Department has separately sued over the 30-day handgun wait. It also points to Florida’s attorney general, who filed an offer of judgment in June conceding that Florida’s three-day wait is “unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”

Who Is Backing the Challengers, and Who Is Not Showing Up

Three amicus briefs are on the Supreme Court docket, all in support of the petitioners. The Second Amendment Foundation and the NRA filed on September 22, and the Buckeye Institute filed on September 28.

The biggest one came the same day. The states’ brief, filed by Montana Solicitor General Christian B. Corrigan, is listed on the docket for the “State of Montana and 24 other states” and is signed by the attorneys general of 24 states, Montana included, plus the President of the Arizona Senate and the Speaker of the Arizona House. It argues that a forced delay before taking possession is “a[] restriction[]” on keeping arms.

Then there is Maine. On September 24, Assistant Attorney General Paul E. Suitter filed the Court’s standard waiver form: “I DO NOT INTEND TO FILE A RESPONSE to the petition unless one is requested by the Court.” Under the Court’s Rule 15, that waiver is what sent the petition to the justices six days later.

A waiver is not a concession. Maine won below, and under Rule 15.1 a respondent does not have to file anything unless the Court asks.

What Happens at the October 16 Conference

On conference days the justices meet privately to discuss and vote on petitions for review. A distribution is a place on that list, nothing more. It is not a grant, and it is not a sign of one.

Four things can come out of it. The Court can grant review, or it can deny the petition. Because Maine filed nothing, it can also request a response from the state, which the Court’s Rule 15.1 allows. Or it can take no action that day and put the case on a later conference list.

That last one can run for months. Snope v. Brown, a Second Amendment petition against Maryland’s attorney general, was distributed for 16 conferences between December 2024 and May 2025 before the Court denied it on June 2, 2025, with Justices Alito and Gorsuch saying they would have granted it.

I will not guess the outcome. If the Court asks Maine for a response, the state has to defend its law on paper after all. If it denies, the First Circuit’s ruling stands.

What a Maine Gun Buyer Should Do Now

Nothing changes until the Court acts. No one has asked the justices to put the law on hold, and the only applications on the docket were requests for more time to file the petition. Plan purchases around the 72 hours, and check the statute’s exceptions, which cover sales to police and corrections officers, licensed security guards, firearm dealers, family members, antiques, curios and relics traded between licensed collectors, and transfers that need no background check.

Watch the order list after October 16. A denial leaves the First Circuit’s ruling in place and sends the fight back to the district court in Maine, where the panel remanded it. A grant puts a cooling-off law in front of the justices on the merits.

One conference. Fourteen jurisdictions waiting on the answer.

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