Republicans in the Maine Senate tried but failed Thursday night to force Democrats to hold a public hearing on a controversial “red flag” gun law proposal.
Maine voters will decide this November whether to enact a “red flag” law that would allow family members to ask a judge to order someone to temporarily surrender their guns. Republicans and gun owners’ rights groups are pointing to a state law that says that lawmakers must hold a public hearing on ballot initiatives unless two-thirds of both chambers of the Legislature vote to waive the requirement.
But the Democrats who lead the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee — Sen. Anne Carney of Cape Elizabeth and Rep. Amy Kuhn of Falmouth — have said that the Maine Constitution does not require a hearing during the citizen initiative process. And they said this fall’s referendum is the best and most direct way to hear from the public.
Late Thursday night, Senate Republican leader Trey Stewart attempted three parliamentary maneuvers to force a hearing.
“You know we don’t need to go down this road,” Stewart of Presque Isle said before one of the party-line votes. “It’s unfortunate that this is where we are at. It’s unfortunate that the process that we have all relied on and gotten accustomed to has been so deeply circumnavigated in this case.”
Before the votes, Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, ruled that the Senate could not even grant Stewart’s motions because the bill was still in the Judiciary Committee and could still be acted upon by the panel. Democrats, who hold 20 of the Senate’s 35 seats, then sided with Daughtry’s rulings after Stewart appealed each one.
This likely will not be the last word on the issue, however.
The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, Gun Owners of Maine and the NRA are vowing to sue the Legislature unless lawmakers hold a public hearing. The groups believe that opponents of the red flag proposal — potentially including Gov. Janet Mills and her administration — will come in out force to voice their concerns about the bill, thereby undermining the campaign to pass the ballot initiative.
Roughly 20 other states have red flag laws — also known as extreme risk protection orders — that allow both law enforcement as well as members of a person’s family or household to seek a court order to force someone to relinquish their guns if they are believed to pose a threat to themselves or others. Maine, however, has a “yellow flag” law that only allows police to directly initiate that gun removal process with the courts. Maine’s law also requires a medical professional to determine that the person poses a risk to themselves or others.
That law was negotiated by Mills, representatives of SAM as well as gun control advocates in 2019. It has been utilized more than 800 times since then, most often to attempt to remove the weapons of potentially suicidal individuals.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
