A public hearing on a bill in the Maine Legislature that would allow family members to petition a judge to temporarily confiscate the guns of a dangerous person drew a large crowd at the State House on Friday.
The proposal, backed by Democratic leaders, is fiercely opposed by gun rights groups, while supporters say it will fill a critical gap in Maine’s current risk protection order law.
Much of the testimony on the so-called red flag bill broke along two arguments.
Gun rights activists oppose it because they believe it would be too easy to confiscate someone's firearms. They also say Maine’s current yellow flag law could have prevented October's mass shootings in Lewiston had it been utilized by police.
Supporters countered that the gunman's family should have been able to petition the courts, rather than rely on police and a mental health evaluation. These are two requirements that differentiate Maine's risk protection order law from ones in more than 20 other states.
David Moltz, a psychiatrist from Portland, argued that Maine's current law only applies to people with mental illness, not everyone who might hurt themselves or others.
"Certainly a majority of homicides are done not by people with mental illness, but by people in some kind of crisis, or are just angry," Moltz said.
Moltz spoke on behalf of the Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians, which supports the red flag bill in part because the organization believes it will help prevent suicides, which comprise nearly 90% of Maine's gun fatalities.
Maine's yellow flag law was used 216 times through mid-March since it was implemented in 2020 and there's been sharp uptick since the Lewiston killings. Of those confiscation orders, nearly half were in response to someone contemplating suicide.
But mental health advocates say Maine's yellow flag law wrongly assumes that all dangerous people have mental illness. Gun safety advocates add that family members should also be allowed to petition the courts to have a loved one's weapons removed instead of just relying on police.
The proposal is the second red flag bill introduced since 2019 when lawmakers, gun rights groups and Gov. Janet Mills settled on the so-called yellow flag compromise instead.
David Trahan, director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, played a key role in the compromise and he defended the bill as a success during repeated questioning by Democratic lawmakers on Friday.
Gov. Mills has not taken a position on the bill and has proposed tweaking Maine's current law. Gun rights groups have vowed to oppose it, as have Republicans, whose votes would be needed to override a veto by the governor.
Maine’s yellow flag law is different from red flag laws in two key ways. It does not allow family members to directly petition a court to remove someone’s guns. That process must start with the police.
The second key difference is that Maine requires police — after taking the person into “protective custody” — to bring the person before a medical professional for an assessment if he or she “presents a likelihood of foreseeable harm.” If so, a judge then decides whether to “endorse” the finding and order the person to surrender their guns for up to a year after a hearing.
Proponents say the additional step of a medical assessment helps ensure “due process,” a reference to the clause in the U.S. Constitution that says the government shall not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” They also contend that requiring police to initiate the process also reduces the likelihood that a gun owner may have their weapons seized in response to a false petition filed by, say, a vindictive former partner.
Red flag law supporters counter that false petitions almost never happen and that people making them could be prosecuted. Such a provision is in the Maine proposal, making false petitions a Class D crime.
The proposal is being reviewed by the Legislature's Judiciary Committee which will vote on it before sending it to the full Legislature.
