We need more red flag laws
Yet another public mass shooting has traumatized the nation, after 18 were murdered in Lewiston, Maine last night.
Each new shooting prompts fresh despair that our divided country can’t come together to stop gun violence. But we have and we can.
First, here’s what’s leading the Washington Monthly web site:
- Mike Johnson Is Not an Upgrade from Kevin McCarthy: My analysis of the final act of the sorry House speaker drama, and why, if you squint, you can find glimmers of hope. Click here for the full story.
- Conspiracy Theories Have Helped Republicans—But They Can Doom Them, Too: Contributing Writer David Atkins argues that the “conspiratorial fantasies” of the GOP base may prompt some of them to abandon Donald Trump for an even crazier choice: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Click here for the full story.
- The Vote-by-Mail Switcheroo: From one year ago, before we knew where Mike Johnson would end up, Editor-in-Chief Paul Glastris spotlighted his role in Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election. Click here for the full story.
What can we do to reduce gun violence? States can build on the federal gun safety package, passed with a bipartisan vote in 2022, and enact red flag laws. Such laws allow court orders that prevent people who pose a risk to themselves or others from buying and possessing guns.
Back in April, after The Covenant School shooting in Nashville, I wrote for the Monthly about the effectiveness of red flag laws. One researcher estimated for every 10-to-20 red flag orders issued, one life was saved.
The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act provides funds to states that adopt red flag laws. When the law was signed in June 2022, 19 states already had red flag laws.
Nearly all are blue states, but Republican-led Florida adopted a red flag law after the Parkland school shooting.
When I addressed the issue last April, that number hadn’t yet budged. But in May, Michigan and Minnesota—two states with new Democratic state government trifectas—joined the red flag club.
Since 2019, Maine has had a Democratic trifecta. But it does not yet have a red flag law. Instead, Maine—a mostly rural state with a longstanding gun culture—adopted in 2019 a more cumbersome “yellow flag” law, which requires police or concerned family and friends to obtain a formal medical opinion in addition to a court order.
In turn, few yellow flag orders have been issued in Maine, though, according to the Portland Press Herald, as of late the number had been increasing.
What we know about the Lewiston suspect suggests he could have been thwarted by a well-implemented yellow or red flag law, as he recently spent two weeks in a mental health facility and threatened to shoot up a National Guard base.
In April, I urged the authors of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to finish the job:
One source of pressure should come from the Republicans and Democrats in Washington who passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, including the lead Senate negotiators Kyrsten Sinema, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis. These people supposedly want their handiwork to succeed and not be remembered as a toothless bill.
Neither U.S. Senator from Tennessee backed the gun safety bill. But both Maine senators, including Republican Susan Collins, were co-sponsors.
The heavily Republican Tennessee state legislature has refused to act, despite the Republican governor supporting a red flag law and convening a special legislative session to address the issue.
But Maine should set an example, and replace its yellow flag law with an easier-to-implement red flag law.
