Republican Senator Susan Collins is working on a new bill that suggests using state crisis intervention laws to take away guns from people seen as a threat to themselves or others. The idea is still being developed, but it was talked about during a Maine Calling program by David Trahan, who heads the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, a big gun rights group.
This group helped create Maine’s crisis intervention law, often known as red or yellow flag laws. Trahan thinks that these laws should have been used to take away the guns from the Army reservist who did a terrible shooting in October, where 18 people were killed and 13 were hurt.
He says, “That should have been resolved months before that, he (the gunman) should never have had a gun to conduct this. That’s the place where our system failed, and that’s where our organization will put our very significant influence in the coming months.”
Trahan doesn’t like other gun control ideas, saying they wouldn’t have stopped the shooting. Collins also believes that Maine’s yellow flag law should have been used to prevent the shootings.
Collins is making this bill because of a split in how people want to deal with shootings. Independent Senator Angus King introduced a law to control assault-style weapons by making sure they have magazines with limits on how many rounds they can hold. This is seen as an alternative to completely banning these weapons, which hasn’t been popular in Congress and the Maine Legislature. Collins is not supporting this bill.
Other politicians have different views. Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree still supports other gun control ideas, and the Lewiston shootings led Democratic Representative Jared Golden to change his mind about an assault weapons ban.
Gun rights supporters are focused on what they see as problems with using Maine’s yellow flag law. Some law enforcement officials think the law is complicated and makes it harder to take away weapons from mentally ill people.
State Rep. Victoria Doudera suggests changing the yellow flag law to be more like the red flag laws in about two dozen other states. Trahan defends the current law, saying it gives citizens more rights during the process than other red flag laws.
