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Backers of gun control, including the father of a man who died in last year’s Lewiston mass shooting, launched a campaign on Thursday to put a “red flag” law on the Maine ballot.
The context: The push calls for allowing both family members and police to ask judges to confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous. Gov. Janet Mills was the driving force behind Maine’s novel “yellow flag” law, which passed in 2019 and only allows police to trigger that process.
The current law has been heavily scrutinized since the shooting, including by gun control proponents who want to pass a stronger law. A Mills-appointed commission concluded that the yellow flag law gave police a way to seize Card’s guns in the weeks before the shooting while noting that police called the current law cumbersome.
Why it matters: The effort was launched by a “Safe Schools, Safe Communities” group that is led by the Maine Gun Safety Coalition. One of its leaders is Arthur Barnard, whose son, Arthur Strout, was one of the 18 people killed by gunman Robert Card II last October.
The push shows lingering divides between progressives and Gov. Janet Mills, who provoked conservatives by allowing a 72-hour waiting period law to pass this year alongside mandated background checks on advertised gun sales and tweaks to the yellow flag law. She has generally opposed gun restrictions since she and Democrats won control of Augusta in 2018.
The big picture: Red flag laws have been a leading response to mass shootings elsewhere. They are in effect in 21 states, according to Everytown, a gun control group.
Legislative Democrats advanced a red flag bill toward the end of this year’s session but adjourned without taking it up. That was a sign that they never had the votes to force a confrontation with Mills, who has defended the law she negotiated with the gun-rights Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.
What they’re saying: “In the year since I lost my son, we went to Augusta and tried to get lawmakers to do the right thing and tighten this law up, and they fell short,” Barnard said in a statement. “Now we’re taking this common sense proposal directly to the people of Maine.”
The sportsman’s alliance will fight any red flag effort, said David Trahan, the group’s executive director, who nodded to the exploding use of the current law across Maine since the shooting and the due process concerns that gun-rights advocates have with red flag laws.
“Maine’s yellow flag law is working great,” he said.
What’s next: The effort cannot appear on the ballot until at least 2025. To make it, supporters will have to gather nearly 68,000 signatures from registered voters by the end of January.
These campaigns typically gather a large share of those at the polls on Election Day, and this year’s high-turnout presidential election should be a boon on that front.
