Months after Maine's deadliest mass shooting, state lawmakers held an hourslong hearing Friday to debate a so-called red flag bill that would let family members petition a judge to remove guns from someone experiencing a psychiatric crisis.
Supporters say it's important to reconsider the proposal after a gunman killed 18 people last fall amid signs of deteriorating mental health.
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Critics say a red flag law would unfairly target law-abiding gun owners and infringe on their constitutional rights.
An independent commission studying the Lewiston shooting issued an interim report last month that said police had the authority to seize guns from shooter Robert Card under the state’s existing “yellow flag” law. Card was found dead by suicide after the Oct. 25 shootings at a bowling alley and bar and grill in Lewiston.
The 40-year-old gunman, an Army reservist, was becoming paranoid and delusional, and was hospitalized while his reserve unit was training in New York. A fellow reservist warned he might commit a mass shooting.
House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, a Democrat, said the measure could help the state reduce gun violence, which she described as a public health crisis, including suicides carried out with firearms.
Under the bill, the request for a crisis intervention order could be filed by a family member or other household members or by a law enforcement officer. The court could then issue such an order if it finds that the person in question has inflicted or attempted to inflict bodily harm on another person, has placed another person in fear of physical harm, has presented a danger to someone in their care or has threatened to kill themselves.
The intervention order would prohibit the individual from buying or possessing a gun.
Full crisis intervention orders would require a court hearing within 14 days and be valid for one year. The person in question would have to be notified. The bill would make it a crime to file a false claim seeking a protective order.
In cases where it's clear that someone poses an imminent threat, the bill would allow emergency crisis intervention within a matter of hours and without notice to the individual, and would remain valid for up to 14 days, Ross said.
Supporters said the proposal is a reasonable effort to respond to the concerns of families and police trying to prevent people from causing harm to themselves or others during a period of crisis.
“This process requires us to strike a thoughtful balance between constitutional liberties and public safety," Ross said.
Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, said the state's yellow flag law doesn't go far enough.
“Our communities can't wait. We can't wait for another tragedy. We can't continue to do nothing while our Maine families are losing loved one after loved one,” she said. “Maine needs a solution that works efficiently, lawfully and fairly — and that Maine-based solution is this extreme risk protection order.”
Gun owners urged lawmakers to reject the proposal, which they said goes too far.
“Our right to defend ourselves is not given to us by the government. It is given to us as human beings and it is codified by the United States Constitution and the Maine Constitution,” said Laura Whitcomb, president of Gun Owners of Maine.
“This particular piece of legislation does nothing to remove other instruments of harm, does nothing to protect the public from potentially harmful individuals once those firearms are removed,” she added. “All this law does is check a box for the gun control lobby.”
Other gun owners said they feared the prospect of government officials being able to come into their homes and remove their firearms without what they described as due process.
The current yellow flag law requires police to take someone into protective custody, initiating a case that eventually ends up before a judge. It went into effect in 2020 in lieu of a red flag law, aimed at simplifying the process by letting police handle it. The independent commission said the yellow flag law should have been applied to the Lewiston gunman.
Joe Anderson was working as a pediatrician at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston on the night of the shooting.
“In the aftermath and the days following the tragedy I felt an immense sense of guilt," Anderson said, added that he felt that he hadn't done enough to help prevent such a mass shooting.
In response, he helped form a new group — Maine Providers for Gun Safety — with other doctors, nurses and health care providers to help push for strategies to address gun violence, including the red flag proposal.
“Extreme risk protection orders have broad support across the medical community and have been enacted in over 20 states," he said.