Key Takeaways
- Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and 24 states filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review Beckwith v. Frey regarding Maine’s 72-hour waiting period for firearms.
- The petitioners argue that the waiting period restricts the ‘keeping’ of arms under the Second Amendment, potentially meeting the criteria set by the Bruen decision.
- Both amicus briefs claim that Maine cannot justify its law under historical firearm regulation, stating that waiting periods are anomalies without Founding-era precedent.
- The coalition believes that if such laws do not touch the Second Amendment’s text, they bypass historical scrutiny altogether, undermining the Bruen decision.
- The Supreme Court has not decided whether to take the case, which will be tracked as developments occur.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
WASHINGTON, DC — Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and 24 other states filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on September 28, 2026, urging the justices to hear Beckwith v. Frey, a challenge to Maine’s 72-hour waiting period on taking possession of a firearm. An amicus brief is a filing from someone who is not a party to the case but wants the Court to hear their argument anyway. This one lands in docket No. 26-258 and follows a September 22 amicus brief from the Second Amendment Foundation and the National Rifle Association of America on the same side.
The petitioners, Andrea Beckwith and others, are asking the Court to review a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that went against them, reported at 171 F.4th 560. The request is a petition for a writ of certiorari, which is the formal way of asking the Supreme Court to take up a lower court’s ruling, and the Court grants only a small fraction of them. Aaron M. Frey, Maine’s attorney general, is the respondent, sued individually and in his official capacity. The justices have not yet said whether they will take the case.
Both briefs aim at the same spot. Under the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, a Second Amendment case runs in two steps. First, does the plain text of the amendment cover what the person wants to do? If it does, the government then has to prove the law fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The state carries that burden, not the citizen. The Montana coalition’s lead argument is that a cooling-off law clears step one because a delay on when a buyer may take possession of a firearm is a restriction on the “keep[ing]” of arms, and its brief points to what it calls the predicate-act canon and property cases to show the text covers the act of taking possession. SAF and NRA make the companion point: the Court should grant review to confirm that the plain-text analysis is “not meant to be a difficult hurdle for plaintiffs to meet.”
That threshold is the whole fight. If a law that stands between a buyer and the firearm he has chosen does not even touch the Second Amendment’s text, the state never has to open a history book to defend it. Push enough laws to the wrong side of that line and the history-and-tradition test Bruen built stops mattering, because nothing ever reaches it. That is what 25 states and two national gun rights organizations are asking the Court to fix.
The briefs do not stop at the threshold. The Montana coalition argues that even at step two, Maine cannot justify its cooling-off law under the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. SAF and NRA argue that waiting periods are a historical anomaly and that firearms were readily available even in the Founding era. If that history holds up, Maine is defending a law with no Founding-era ancestor, and that is the kind of law Bruen tells the government it cannot sustain.
For a Maine resident who decides they need a firearm for self-defense, 72 hours is not a paperwork detail. It is three days of being unarmed after concluding they should not be. A serious self-defense mindset means planning ahead so that day never arrives with an empty holster, but the state should not be the reason it does. Maine gun owners who want the rest of the state’s rules can find them in my Maine concealed carry guide.
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These are the arguments of the petitioners’ supporters, not a ruling. Maine has not had its say in these filings, and the Court can decline the case without a word of explanation.
I will continue tracking Beckwith v. Frey as the Supreme Court decides whether to take it up.
Bill data from the U.S. Congress via api.congress.gov (public domain).
