As noted on Friday, Maine is considering a red flag law. I talked about a lot of the issues with the proposal in that piece, and I sincerely hope you read that.
Nothing has changed overnight for me. Every word of that is accurate.
However, the Bangor Daily News decided to talk about the questions before the voters, including Question 2, which is about the red flag proposal, and there are...issues.
The law behind Question 2 would give families, who are typically closest to those in crisis, an avenue to petition a court directly to have firearms temporarily removed from someone they believe to be in danger or to pose a danger. Importantly, it would not repeal Maine’s yellow flag law. Instead, it would supplement it.
We support giving families this additional tool, which is available in 21 states.
The law is not perfect. It could still leave law enforcement and family members in the dangerous position of trying to remove guns from someone who is violent and, perhaps, unpredictable. Unlike the current law, it does not require a mental health evaluation, or protective custody. These are among the reasons the ballot question is opposed by Maine State Police, the governor and the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. Question 2 is supported by the state’s medical associations, the Maine Education Association and the executive director of the commission that investigated the Lewiston shooting.
Neither the existing yellow flag law nor the proposed red flag law has provisions to help alleviate Maine’s chronic shortage of mental health treatment services. That is an ongoing challenge that the Maine Legislature needs to get much more serious about tackling.
Now, I'm going to give them some credit for acknowledging why law enforcement says they're opposed to this measure, but there's something the paper didn't mention that needs to be considered, also.
As it stands, Maine's so-called yellow flag law puts the power for gun confiscation in the hands of mental health providers. These are people who are far more likely to understand the difference between someone just being upset or feeling down and someone who is in crisis and a risk to themselves or others.
Family members having the power to take someone's guns away, however, is fraught with problems.
In one of the best-case scenarios, they're just wrong about how bad off someone is and take their guns for no reason. As a result, this might well foster distrust between the victim and the rest of their family, thus potentially cutting them off from a much-needed support system.
But a far more nefarious outcome is a family member using a law like this to punish a relative they disagree with. We saw one such example in Colorado, where their red flag laws allow significant others to seek orders. A woman claimed to be the girlfriend of a police officer and that he was a danger. The officer wasn't seeing the woman. He'd shot and killed her son in a "suicide by cop" situation, and she was trying to punish him.
Luckily, she was unsuccessful, but the precedent is there, and we don't know how many other people have had their guns taken in similar cases that weren't uncovered by the authorities.
Then we have the potential of abusive partners using the law to disarm their intended victims and a host of other things, none of which come up in that so-called discussion.
Of course, it's not like the media ever bothers to think about this or much of anything else, so I can't say I'm surprised.
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