AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills’ administration reiterated its opposition to a proposed “red flag” gun control proposal that received a late public hearing Wednesday before heading to Maine voters in a November referendum.
Democrats who control the Legislature decided Monday to hold the hearing on the initiative in the waning days of the 2025 session after gun-rights groups and their allies threatened to file a lawsuit if no public hearing took place on the measure that drew renewed attention after the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston that was the state’s deadliest on record.
Those groups pushed for the hearing to flesh out Mills, a Democrat who already criticized the “red flag” initiative during a budget speech in January, as well as the Maine State Police. The governor said in a January address that it would undermine a “yellow flag” compromise she crafted with the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and gun-control advocates in 2019.
Maine’s current yellow flag law allows police to initiate the process by taking a person deemed dangerous into protective custody, having a medical professional evaluate them and then having a judge decide whether they should temporarily lose access to their weapons.
Gun control advocates think it is inadequate. Another 21 states have red flag laws that allow family members as well as police to ask a court to require a person to relinquish their guns if they are deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others. They are also known as extreme risk protection orders.
Mills sent her top lawyer, Jerry Reid, and Maine State Police Lt. Michael Johnston to testify against the measure on Wednesday. Reid said in written testimony that the mental health assessment serves as a bulwark against constitutional concerns, while Johnston said the red flag law could lead to more dangerous situations for police serving red flag orders.
“We’re not taking them into protective custody. We’re not taking them under arrest,” he said. “We’re just there to serve them with the order and take possession of their firearms or dangerous weapons.”
Supporters of a “red flag” law argued Wednesday before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee that it would empower family members to take quicker actions to help loved ones.
“They are the first lines of defense,” said Arthur Barnard, whose 42-year-old son, Artie Strout, was one of the 18 people killed in the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar. “They are the first ones who know.”
After the Legislature ran out of time last year to consider a “red flag” proposal, a Maine Gun Safety Coalition-led group whose members include family members of Lewiston mass shooting victims launched an effort to let voters settle the issue. The group said in January they collected more than 80,000 signatures to qualify the question for the November ballot.
Maine police have utilized the “yellow flag” law more than 800 times since its inception, with most of that use coming after the Lewiston mass shooting that led lawmakers and Mills to pass changes meant to make it easier for police to take people into protective custody. Massachusetts used its red flag law no more than 20 times in a year between 2018 and 2022.
The Lewiston mass shooting review commission that Mills established also found the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office had enough probable cause to use the yellow flag law with the 40-year-old gunman and Army reservist instead of only performing welfare checks at his Bowdoin residence a few weeks before the rampage.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.