Kittery Trading Post threatens to move firearms business to New Hampshire over new gun law

AUGUSTA, Maine — Kittery Trading Post , the gun seller and outdoor sports retailer located by Interstate 95 in southern Maine, said Thursday it will move its firearms business to New Hampshire if a 72-hour waiting period law takes effect.

Thursday’s statement from the family-owned store founded in 1938 came after Gov. Janet Mills announced Monday she would let a Democratic proposal to require three-day waiting periods on firearm purchases become law without her signature.

The law will not take effect until the summer and does not apply to antique firearm sales nor deals between family members, among other exceptions. Mills has also directed the state’s public safety commissioner and attorney general to monitor legal challenges to similar statutes in states such as Vermont while also clarifying how it will affect temporary transfers, such as for guided hunts, and people with pressing self-protection concerns.

But Kittery Trading Post’s statement on how it will “be forced to move our entire firearms business to New Hampshire” came the same week the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and Gun Owners of Maine vowed to sue the state over the waiting period law, highlighting the intense debates and fallout over gun control legislation since last year’s Lewiston mass shooting .

Kittery Trading Post said it annually sells more than $11 million worth of new and used firearms and that 60 percent of its firearms business involves out-of-state residents. If the waiting period law takes effect, it estimated a more than $400,000 loss in sales tax revenue and a loss of 40,000 customers annually.

The company said the waiting period measure forces “law-abiding customers” to make two visits over three days to complete a sale, which “means extra time, gas and sundries which further drives up the cost of the transaction for the consumer.”

Kittery Trading Post Vice President Fox Keim told the Bangor Daily News the company and its 350 employees “cater to a diverse clientele and have historically stayed out of politics.”

“This law will impact all categories of business, not just firearms,” Keim said. “We are a multi-generational family destination store and will fight to uphold our values.”

The company did not immediately specify where it would move to in New Hampshire, though it already has a gun exchange facility just over the border in Portsmouth.

Mills, a Democrat, also vetoed Monday a proposed ban on bump stocks that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns. Both measures narrowly passed the Democratic-controlled Legislature in April after failing as recently as last year, but the Oct. 25 mass shooting in Lewiston that left 18 dead and 13 injured has led to a sharp change in the gun control debate in a rural state with a strong hunting and gun ownership traditions.

The Army reservist who carried out Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record had legally purchased his rifle and other guns months before the October rampage, but Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, who sponsored the waiting period bill, has pointed to the ability of waiting periods to reduce suicides in a state where more than half of suicides in 2021 involved a firearm.

“I am confident that the 72-hour waiting period will save lives and save many families the heart break of losing a loved one to suicide by firearm,” Rotundo said earlier this week.

Mills, who has opposed more sweeping gun control legislation in the past and worked closely with Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine leader David Trahan on the 2019 “yellow flag” law, also signed last month her proposal to extend background checks to advertised gun sales and tweak the yellow flag statute to make it easier for police to take people into protective custody.

The governor’s plan also makes it a felony to sell guns to prohibited people and includes various mental health and violence prevention initiatives, such as the construction of new crisis receiving centers, that made it into the supplemental budget.

Kittery Trading Post has seen gun control advocates protest outside of its store in previous years, including after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida . In February, nearly four dozen Democratic lawmakers signed letters asking Kittery Trading Post and Cabela’s to stop selling “military-style, semi-automatic weapons” in the wake of the mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar.

Mills is scheduled to speak Friday afternoon at Just-In-Time Recreation during a reopening ceremony for the Lewiston bowling alley.