A U.S. congressman previously staunchly opposed to gun-control measures reverses course after 18 die in Maine shooting

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Jared Golden changed his mind. The political earth in the United States shifted, if only a bit.

Mr. Golden, a 41-year-old combat veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is a Democrat who barely won his seat five years ago.

He repeatedly has voted against gun-control measures on Capitol Hill. He represents a congressional riding full of hunters and voters supportive enough of Donald Trump to deliver its single electoral vote to him in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. He was born in Lewiston, Maine, took his degree from Bates College in Lewiston, and lives with his wife and daughter in Lewiston.

The day after a gunman’s rampage in Lewiston killed 18 people – residents of the area, for the most part – Mr. Golden, a gun-owner himself, disavowed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons and enlisted in the army of advocates for at least some enhanced measure of control of weapons.

“This is a community of only 36,000 people,” Mr. Golden said in an interview as the manhunt for Robert Card, identified by law-enforcement officials as the likely shooter, continued throughout his congressional riding and beyond. (The gunman was later found dead). “I know and have lived in and around this community my entire life. I was instantly worried about my family but also worried about so many families.”

And he said he was sorry.

In a news conference in Lewiston, the Democratic lawmaker said, “To the people of Lewiston, my constituents throughout the 2nd [congressional] district, to the families who have lost loved ones, I ask for forgiveness and support as I seek to put an end to these terrible shootings.”

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, also a combat veteran in Iraq, said Mr. Golden displayed “true political courage,” adding, “Real leaders are willing to change their minds and suffer the backlash that comes with it.”

While there have been other celebrated changes of viewpoint in American history – then-Michigan Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg’s slow evolution during the 1940s from isolationism to internationalism, for example – Mr. Golden’s was perhaps the most dramatic and radical in modern times. It came not gradually as a result of lengthy deliberation and internal debate but almost instantly, after a single incident.

“This is something that was one of the most important elements of his career, campaign and record, an issue for which he was pilloried by fellow Democrats,” said Sandy Maisel, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Me., 87 kilometres east of Lewiston. “Then, he switched.”

Last year, Mr. Golden was one of five Democrats who voted against a ban on assault weapons that passed the House of Representatives by a slim margin. He voted against enhanced background checks for gun sales twice in each of 2019 and 2021.

Mr. Golden lives about a three-minute jog from the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley where some of the shootings occurred.

He represents a riding – the only one in New England to side with Mr. Trump in the 2020 election – that accounts for about four-fifths of Maine and that is the second-most rural district in the United States. When the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife boasts that “Maine has over 17 million acres of extraordinary land available to hunters,” it is speaking largely about Mr. Golden’s district.

The area elected Republicans to the House for all but 22 of the 138 years beginning in 1856; one of them was Margaret Chase Smith (House member, 1940-1949), remembered for her 1950 Declaration of Conscience speech, delivered after she became a senator, that attacked the Cold War red scare.

In that speech, she said, “I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.”

Mr. Golden did his soul searching as he travelled to Lewiston in the wake of the shootings. In the interview, Mr. Golden said, “I still believe in the Second Amendment,” which speaks of “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”

He emphasized that “I am still skeptical of many proposals put forward in the gun-control space,” arguing that enforcement of some of the proposals was beyond the capacity of government officials.

And he said that as he learned details of the shootings, he reflected on how he had “often shared peoples’ desire to have firearms to protect their family.”

He went on: “I understand that. In the line of work that I do, most people serving in Congress get death threats. It is a very difficult political time. I have carried firearms these last two years since my daughter was born, purely out of a desire to protect my family.”

Speaking of the weapon that the Maine shooter employed in his rampage, Mr. Golden said that “nine times out of 10, a firearm is going to be no match for some kind of perpetrator with an AR-15, and you’re almost kidding yourself if you think that way.

“I can only think of a couple of solutions for people like me who want to protect their families,” he continued. “One is to walk around with AR-15s strapped on our backs. I don’t want to live in that kind of society, with its ceaseless escalation of the type of firepower we would all have to possess.

“Another would be a kind of overreaching ‘surveillance state’ that would impinge on our freedoms. Putting a ceiling on what we can have and banning these kinds of firearms that I am very familiar with as a combat Marine may be the way to go.”

As the interview drew to a close, Mr. Golden was confronted with the question of whether he expected a negative reaction to his new position. “I wouldn’t have said what I said if I was worried about that,” he answered. “It came from the heart.”