The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation have petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for certiorari in Beckwith v. Frey. The request follows a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that upheld Maine’s 72-hour waiting period on firearm purchases.
Maine’s rule is a cooling-off delay. It applies after a buyer has already cleared a background check. Those 72 hours do not complete a screening the state has already finished. They keep a cleared citizen from taking possession of a firearm the government has already approved.
A background check answers whether the purchaser is prohibited from receiving a firearm. When that check is complete and the purchaser is not prohibited, the remaining delay is not about eligibility. It is a government-imposed pause on a right the buyer has already been cleared to exercise.
The First Circuit left that delay in force. Law-abiding purchasers in Maine who pass a background check still wait three days. The NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation took that result to the Supreme Court. Their petition asks the justices to review the waiting-period regime the First Circuit allowed to stand and to strike it down.
The filing asks the Court to decide whether such waiting periods can survive Bruen. Lower-court approval of Maine’s delay does not settle the constitutional question. The Second Amendment is not a suggestion that yields to a three-day statutory hold.
Waiting periods after a completed check treat lawful possession as a privilege the state may slow down. The Constitution does not describe the right to keep and bear arms as something that vests 72 hours after paperwork. Statutes in Augusta do not rewrite that text.
Beckwith v. Frey now sits before the Court as a petition for review. The First Circuit has spoken. The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation have asked the justices to take the case and measure Maine’s 72-hour cooling-off mandate against Bruen.
What happens next is a decision on the petition. Officials who swear an oath to the Constitution are bound by that document first. A waiting period that withholds a firearm from a person already cleared is a restriction on the right to keep and bear arms, and the Supreme Court is being asked to say so.
References
- https://dailycaller.com/2026/09/22/pro-2a-groups-ask-supreme-court-to-shoot-down-waiting-periods/
- https://www.tampafp.com/gun-rights-groups-urge-supreme-court-to-strike-down-maines-waiting-period-law/
- https://yournews.com/2026/09/22/7203209/pro-2a-groups-ask-supreme-court-to-shoot-down-waiting-periods/