After multiple failed attempts in the legislature, the Maine Gun Safety Coalition on Thursday submitted more than 80,000 signatures in the hopes that voters will pass a red flag law to take guns away from dangerous people.
If passed, Maine would join 21 other states with extreme risk protection order laws, most of which allow family members to petition a judge to confiscate firearms from a loved one so they don't harm themselves or others.
Maine has a version of an ERPO — dubbed a yellow flag law — but it relies on law enforcement to initiate the process and includes a mental health evaluation. Critics argue those additional steps make the law burdensome for cops and exclude family members from taking their concerns directly to a judge.
During a press conference in the State House Hall of Flags, the Maine Gun Safety Coalition's Nacole Palmer said she expects gun rights groups to go all out to try to defeat the proposal should it qualify for the November ballot.
"We know that Mainers reject a false choice between gun rights and gun responsibility," she said. "That we can respect the freedom to own guns, but also respect that communities have the right to feel safe."
Gun rights groups argue red flag laws are unconstitutional, although there's yet to be a successful legal challenge in a state that has one.
Previous red flag proposals have sputtered in the legislature, including last year when Gov. Janet Mills signaled that she would oppose such a measure. An investigation by Maine Public, the Portland Press Herald and Frontline PBS showed that Democrats who control the legislature responded by slow-walking a red flag bill that was introduced late in the session. The proposal never received a vote in the House or Senate before adjournment.
"Too many lawmakers failed to act, buckling under political pressure," said Arthur Barnard, who joined the Maine Gun Safety Coalition after his son Arthur Strout was killed in the Lewiston shooting. "To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I was furious."

Mills, a Democrat, has argued that Maine's yellow flag law is adequate, noting its sharp spike in usage since the Lewiston mass shooting in 2023. She has also challenged the concept of allowing family members to directly petition a judge to have a loved one's guns confiscated.
“Police officers are, on the whole, trained and professional in responding to complaints about people who are dangerous,” she said during an interview in September. “That's their job. It's not the job of a family member. … It's an enormous responsibility that (families) probably shouldn't have.”
She added, “I wouldn't want that responsibility.”
Critics counter that prohibiting family members from petitioning a judge narrows the chances of stopping gun violence. While family members can ask a police officer to consider using Maine's yellow flag law, cops are not required to do so. And few did before Lewiston. The 2019 law was used 81 times before the massacre.
Palmer said the increased usage since the tragedy only underscores the need to make sure family members have a path to save a loved one or others from harm without having to rely on law enforcement. She also said the proposal does not repeal the yellow flag law, which was a compromise crafted by Mills, the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and other stakeholders.
However, the proposed referendum could make the yellow flag law obsolete. That's because it contains a provision that would allow cops to directly petition a judge to remove someone's weapons while bypassing the mental health evaluation requirement in the existing yellow flag law.
Law enforcement officials have complained that the yellow flag law process is burdensome, taking one officer off the street for up to 10 hours while they take the person into protective custody and supervise them while the mental health evaluation is performed. Gun rights advocates counter that those extra steps ensure due process, an assertion echoed by Mills, who said Maine's current law can withstand legal scrutiny.
Gun rights activists also argue that red flag laws can be abused by estranged family members, although instances of such cases is exceedingly rare because most ERPO laws contain penalties for fraudulent or nefarious petitions. The proposed referendum makes fraudulent claims a Class C crime.
Those arguments are certain to be at the center of a referendum campaign that could occur during an off-election year, but alongside a voter photo identification campaign organized by conservative activists.
The photo identification proposal could soon qualify for the ballot. The red flag proposal will have to go through the same process, which requires more than 67,000 valid voter signatures to reach the November ballot.
The Secretary of State now has 30 days to certify the referendum signatures.