PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Two years after the deadliest mass shooting in state history, Maine residents are voting on whether to make it easier for family members to petition a court to restrict a potentially perilous person’s access to guns.
A statewide ballot question (*18*) will ask residents whether they want to build on the state’s yellow flag law, which allows police officers to initiate a process to keep someone away from firearms. The approval would add Maine to more than 20 states that have a red flag law authorizing family members to take the same step.
Gun safety advocates pushed for a stricter red flag law after 18 people were killed in October 2023 when an Army reservist opened fire at a bowling alley and bar and grill in Lewiston. An independent commission appointed by the governor of Maine later concluded that there were numerous opportunities for intervention by both Army officials and civilian law enforcement.
After the shooting, police officials testified before the independent commission that they had difficulty implementing the state’s existing yellow flag law, which they described as cumbersome and time-consuming.
Gun control advocates called this law too frail and arduous to implement. The Yellow Flag Law requires police to take the potentially perilous person into protective custody and hold them for a mental health evaluation.
The Campaign for the Red Flag Law released an ad this fall in which Arthur Barnard, father of Lewiston shooting victim Artie Strout, said the stricter law could have saved his son’s life.
“People in mental health crisis need help, not easy access to guns,” Barnard said in the ad. “Maine’s laws were too weak to save my son’s life. Vote Yes to 2 to change that.”
The red flag proposal faced opposition from Republicans, hunting groups, gun rights organizations and some Democrats. Maine is a relatively low-crime state where gun ownership is widespread, and the state’s laws should reflect that, opponents say.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, rejected the ballot question. She said in October that the yellow flag law was “carefully crafted with Maine in mind” and that it remains the right law for the state.
“We have found common ground on one of the most contentious issues of our time,” Mills wrote in an opinion piece in the Portland Press Herald. “Question 2 would create a new, separate and confusing process that undermines the effectiveness of the law and thereby endangers public safety.”
The ballot question campaign came as the legal fallout from the Lewiston shooting continues.
Survivors and family members of victims of the deadly shooting have sued the U.S. Army and Defense Department, seeking unspecified damages and arguing that the U.S. Army could have stopped Robert Card, the reservist, from carrying out the shootings. They also point to a September Department of Defense monitoring report that accused the U.S. Army of frequently failing to report threats of violence by military personnel.
The report specifically mentions Card, who died by suicide two days after the shooting. It says that failure to consistently report violent threats “could increase the risk of additional violent incidents by service members, such as what happened to Sgt. 1st Class (SFC) Card.”
Card was in the midst of a psychological spiral known to many that led to his hospitalization and left him paranoid, delusional and murderous, victims’ lawyers said.
Card’s family members and fellow reservists said he had been exhibiting delusional and paranoid behavior months before the shootings. A fellow reservist said in a text message, “I think he’s going to freak out and do a mass shooting.”
