Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. The author of four books, his new study of the Ken Curtis administration is due next year. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

The massacre in Lewiston the evening of Oct. 25, 2023, when 18 Mainers lost their lives almost instantly in two separate attacks with semi-automatic weapons, changed our lives. Our sense of safety and security in this “low-crime” state, and our illusion that we were somehow immune to the mass violence that has continued all across this nation, are gone.

And we know it could happen again.

America’s weak and inconsistent laws concerning firearms safety are in large part to blame. In New England, at least, there’s been a reasonably adequate response — but not in Maine.

Among several of the tools in use in four of six states, among 21 nationally in addition to the District of Columbia, were “red flag” laws. Those laws function as an early warning system for imminent violence, to oneself and others, available to family members who can see what’s happening long before law enforcement gets involved.

When Gov. Janet Mills gave her annual State of the Budget address the January following the tragedy in Lewiston, the big question was whether she would go beyond the “yellow flag” law she developed with Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) Director David Trahan, which was passed in 2019. The law allows only police to begin gun removal proceedings and had rarely been used before Lewiston. It failed there, as was incontestably established by a commission the governor herself appointed.

Mills wouldn’t budge, however, leading me to write, “Before the Legislature leaves town in April there should be a red flag law on the books.”

There still isn’t; legislative leaders wouldn’t even bring the issue to a vote.

That is why we are deciding Question 2 on Nov. 4, and it’s vitally important voters understand why the red flag procedure, also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order, needs to become law.

First, it works. The process is similar to what already exists in Maine law in domestic violence cases, where guns can be ordered removed by a judge where high risk to a spouse or partner is shown.

The earlier “extreme risk” bill was endorsed by the late George Smith, Trahan’s predecessor at SAM, who understood the need to balance safety against gun owner rights in a way Trahan simply does not. The law has been upheld by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and, implicitly,
by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 in the Rahimi case.

That’s why Mills, in her recent op-ed on the subject, is wrong to call it constitutionally “suspect,” which suggests that defending the yellow flag, which she calls “our law,” is more important to her than getting at the root of the problem. It’s the yellow flag law, which will remain if the red flag proposal is approved, that raises some uncomfortable issues.

While the yellow flag law has repeatedly been called “more moderate” than the red flag, it isn’t. It requires police to take someone into protective custody — jailing them — so a mental health evaluation can take place, plus a full court proceeding on the gun possession issue. This is, to put it mildly, a highly unusual procedure.

While it’s true the yellow flag has been invoked far more often after Lewiston — 1,100 times, according to Mills — we know nothing about what happened to those who, at least temporarily, lost their liberty and for how long. Removing firearms through a red flag law, also temporarily, is far less intrusive, so it’s hard to understand Mills’ insistence that we don’t need it.

Far more persuasive is an op-ed by Anne Jordan, a former commissioner of public safety who served as executive director of the Mills-appointed Lewiston Commission. She wrote that the facts “led me to a resounding, inescapable conclusion over the course of nine months, thousands of pages of reports and records and hundreds of hours of videos and interviews: we need a better law.”

The red flag is that law. As Jordan says, it’s been proven to work in 21 other states, noting that the yellow flag was “an experiment, an attempt to blaze our own trail” that “tragically failed.” She said of Mills, “I’m disappointed she’s chosen to side with the gun lobby.”

As Mainers, it’s our responsibility to add to our limited set of tools in preventing violence. One law the Legislature did pass, a 72-hour waiting period for purchases, has been dubiously put on hold by federal judge Lance Walker, making this referendum vote more urgent. 

Even if Question 2 is enacted, it won’t prevent every gun death; no law could. But had it been in place, it’s far more likely lives could have been saved in Lewiston, and in the hundreds of firearms deaths that have occurred since then. That is the simplest and best reason to vote “Yes.”