Austin Theriault, a Maine GOP legislator running for a U.S. House seat “as a champion of the Second Amendment,” called the sheriff in January 2023 because he saw a man carry an AR-15 rifle into his house, Huffington Post reported on Monday, September 9, 2024 (read story here).
The police dispatcher’s report says Theriault “wanted law enforcement notified in case the man fired shots.” This isn’t necessarily a case of a Republican not wanting other people to have guns, though. Huffington Post says police files indicate Theriault has “a tendency to unnecessarily report other people’s behavior to the police.”
Meanwhile, in the legislature, Theriault has voted against increasing funding for gun violence prevention and mental health programs, Huffington Post says. Hypocrisy? That’s nothing new for Republicans; they’ve made it a performance art.
There’s ample real-life evidence that saturating society with guns, and letting anybody have them, is a bad idea (see, e.g., example here). But if those are the rules, they apply the same to everybody. Theriault can’t say “we can have guns, but my neighbors can’t.” It doesn’t work that way.
Theriault (photo below), whose NASCAR racing career was ended by injury, is a high school graduate with no special background in public policy who now wants a career in politics.
His opponent, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, is a college graduate and Marine combat veteran who started in politics working for U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), then served in the legislature before being elected to Congress in 2018, and re-elected in 2020 and 2022.
The district is competitive, but prognosticators favor Golden to be re-elected in 2024, and Theriault doesn’t impress me as a strong candidate.
