Gun bill story is a real tragedy

Anyone who spends much time in Augusta watching the legislative process knows that at times it can truly be as boring as watching paint dry.

Sit in one of those committee meetings long enough and you may actually find yourself hoping for a fistfight to break out between Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, and Rep. Chris Greeley, R-Levant, just to break up the monotony.

So when I learned recently that there actually had been a film made about the process, I was at first skeptical.

The film is titled “There Ought to Be a Law,” and it’s playing today at 12:30 p.m. at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

As I’ve checked into the film further, however, I’ve become curious and even optimistic that it may well be worth seeing and that it may have something important to say.

That it is only about 55 minutes long is a big bonus that piqued my interest right away. It blends a heart-rending tale with hard-core politics to tell the real story of how an average citizen can (or in some cases can’t) affect the governmental process.

Sure, some of the nation’s truest dramas have made it to the big screen in true David vs. Goliath fashion. Think “Erin Brockovich” with Julia Roberts and “The Insider” with Al Pacino. But what could be so interesting in Maine’s capital to warrant such a film?

The story behind the film began one May day in 2004 when 18-year-old Laurier J. Belanger Jr. walked into a Wal-Mart in Lewiston and 20 minutes later walked out with a shotgun that less than two days later he would use to kill himself.

When his mother, Catherine Crowley, a mother of four, went to the Wal-Mart store to try to meet the clerk who sold her son the gun, she was told that the store was following the law and that if she didn’t like the law then perhaps she should do something about it.

The mother of four who worked two jobs got busy learning to maneuver in the state’s Legislature.

The film, produced and directed by Anita Clearfield and Geoffrey Leighton of Durham and Shoshana Hoose of Portland, traces her journey.

That summer Crowley wrote every state senator and representative with the idea of drafting legislation that would require a waiting period for people under the age of 21 wishing to purchase a firearm.

She got Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, and Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, to co-sponsor a bill requiring a 10-day waiting period for those under the age of 21.

But as with the majority of any gun legislation in the state, Crowley’s bill quickly got watered down and instead of a 10-day waiting period, sponsors were backing a bill that would require parental consent for 16- and 17-year-olds to purchase firearms.

Even that weakened version was soundly defeated.

You cannot buy alcohol until you are 21, and you cannot purchase cigarettes until you are 18. But you can buy a shotgun in Maine at 16. I’m sure there’s some logic in there somewhere.

Another bill has been submitted this session, asking again for a 10-day waiting period. The Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety shot it down 12 to 1. One member, Rep. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, voted in favor in order to keep the bill alive to be debated on the floor of the House.

Crowley plans to continue her fight. She’s become quite adept at weaving her way through the halls of the Capitol. If ever she thinks of giving up the fight, she wonders if her son had been forced to wait for 10 days to get that gun, would his emotional crisis have passed and would he be alive today.

Each year in Maine about half of the suicides by people between the ages of 10 and 24 are committed with a firearm. Only a small percentage of youths who try to kill themselves with pills or by cutting themselves are successful. When a firearm is used the success rate rises to 91 percent.

Statistics further show that most young people only face a suicide crisis once in their lifetime and it usually lasts a few hours to a few days.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24 in Maine.

I don’t know what genre you’d put “There Ought to Be a Law” in. I’d say it’s a tragedy.