The most important unfinished business from the Lewiston massacre, when a gunman killed 18 Mainers on Oct. 25, 2023, is the state’s lack of a “red flag” law that could have allowed family members to alert police and a judge about the imminent danger Robert Card presented, and removed his firearms.

Instead, the state has a unique “yellow flag” law that provides for police to detain someone pending a mental health evaluation that also can lead to temporary firearms surrender. It’s a cumbersome procedure that stigmatizes the mentally ill — the vast majority of them nonviolent — and ignores that those perpetrating mass shootings are often incredibly angry and deluded, but legally sane.

Yet the path to the red flag law has been far from smooth. Gov. Janet Mills opposes it, and the Legislature adjourned last year without even voting on a bill.

Now, gun safety advocates have put a measure on the November ballot so the people can decide, as they should. Even here, though, the Legislature has been derelict in its duty.

To the consternation of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, Senate Chair Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth, announced last week there would be no public hearing on LD 1378, the initiative for an “Extreme Risk Protection Order Act,” contrary to statute and legislative rules.

When called on the apparent violation, Carney claimed that the state constitution makes no specific mention of this provision and said, “the Constitution takes precedence over the statute.” The press seems to have bought it, describing it as a “procedural standoff.”

But her claim is sheer nonsense. Just because the state constitution doesn’t mention a specific provision doesn’t mean upholding the law becomes optional, for legislators or anyone else. Carney’s assertion — by a practicing attorney, no less — comes dangerously close to providing cover for numerous illegal actions by the current president, who thinks laws about federal employee tenure, deportations and Congress’ “power of the purse” can be ignored whenever he likes.

A subsequent comment by House Chair Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, that Republicans hadn’t objected when the matter came up earlier is also beside the point. All bills filed in the first session must receive public hearings or be carried over — not possible for an initiated bill — unless two-thirds of both chambers agree to a waiver.

Carney and Kuhn made no move to seek a waiver, producing a vow by Republicans to file a lawsuit — a case Democrats controlling the Legislature would almost certainly lose.

In the larger picture, the Judiciary Committee’s gambit can only hurt the referendum’s chances of passage. Since hearings on such bills are routine — though frequently loud and long — voters may well wonder if there’s something wrong with the bill.

Read it through and there’s nothing wrong with it. The measure simply attempts to apply the one measure that might have made a difference on the October day that shocked Mainers to the core; some thought “it can’t happen here,” but it did.

It’s true that the U.S. Supreme Court — through its “discovery” that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to “bear arms” previous courts for two centuries had overlooked — has brought some firearms laws into constitutional doubt, but not this one. The court, by an 8-1 vote in its 2024 Rahimi decision, upheld the same kind of risk protection order used in domestic violence cases that the “red flag” law would also employ.

The high court backed away from its Bruen decision the previous year, which seemed to open the floodgates to challenging any and every firearms law. And this court is definitely an outlier. Even Australia and New Zealand, which once had similarly permissive firearms laws, changed course and developed effective limitations after mass shootings stunned their citizens.

Unfortunately, this state and nation still have the weakest gun safety laws of any major democracy, but the red flag law would infringe any perceived right far less than the yellow flag law, which allows police to lock up anyone they suspect of being dangerous. The red flag law affects only the firearm, not the person.

Gun rights groups, by their continued opposition to a red flag law, seem to value the possession of a firearm more than the liberty of the owner.

The enormous difficulty of enacting reasonable restrictions on firearms makes it doubly important that Mainers head to the polls without a needless cloud over the proposed referendum. Though it’s late in the session, there’s still time to hold a hearing before adjournment. This is not really a partisan issue let alone a procedural one.

It’s about following the law. On that, we ought to be able to agree.