AUGUSTA – When young adults attempt suicide with pills, 3 percent kill themselves.

When young adults attempt suicide with guns, 90 percent kill themselves, said Cathie Whittenburg of the Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence.

That’s why her group and others, including health professionals, will testify Monday in favor of a proposed law requiring a 10-day waiting period before anyone under 21 may buy a firearm.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston. It’s similar to another bill Craven sponsored two years ago after Lewiston mother Cathy Crowley lost her only son to suicide.

After behind-the-scenes lobbying against it by gun activists, legislators watered down the bill to the point Craven said it was useless. She then withdrew it.

She’s trying again.

The public hearing on L.D. 361 will be held at 9:30 a.m. Monday before the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

The loss of Crowley’s son was the topic of a recent independent film, “There Ought To Be a Law,” shown in Auburn and Portland. Two years in the making, the film captured Crowley’s and Craven’s unsuccessful effort to get a waiting-period bill passed in 2005.

Backers are hoping for a better outcome this time.

“Growing research shows if you limit access to firearms, you lower the suicide rates for youth,” Whittenburg said Friday. “This is because it’s such an impulsive act when you’re that age. The cognitive skills are not fully developed. Impulse is your main driving force,” she said.

A waiting period could give anyone thinking about using a firearm to harm themselves or someone else time to realize “that maybe this isn’t the only option,” Whittenburg said. Maine ‘s rate of suicides among youths, is above the national average, “and firearms are the method of choice,” she said.

On May 21, 2004, Laurier “Larry” Belanger Jr., 18, walked into an Auburn department store and bought a 20-gauge shotgun. Then the Lewiston High graduate and member of the Army National Guard went home and shot himself.

After he missed work on a Saturday, and didn’t return calls Sunday morning, his mother went to his Lewiston apartment to check on him.

She found him dead.

Before he took his life, his mother said she saw no signs her son was depressed or troubled, that he hid that from her. But a police report indicated before he died he was was despondent, and had told co-workers he bought a shotgun to kill himself. That information did not reach his mother in time, she said.

Crowley has said she’s convinced if her son had had to wait before he bought the gun he would still be alive. Kids don’t stop and think that next week, or next month, things will be better, she said.

The grieving mother, who has become an activist, plans to be at the State House Monday to testify for Craven’s bill. Saying it can take several attempts to get a law passed, Crowley sees herself as changed from two years ago.

“I’m more determined,” Crowley said.

The hearing will be held in room 126 of the State House.