PORTLAND, Maine — Two years after the deadliest mass taking pictures in state historical past, Maine residents are voting on whether or not to make it simpler for members of the family to petition a court docket to limit a doubtlessly harmful individual’s entry to weapons.
A statewide poll query Tuesday asks residents in the event that they need to construct on the state’s yellow flag legislation, which permits cops to provoke a course of to maintain somebody away from firearms.
Approval would add Maine to greater than 20 states which have a pink flag legislation empowering members of the family to take the identical step.
Gun security advocates started pushing for a stricter pink flag legislation after 18 folks have been killed when an Military reservist opened hearth at a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston in October 2023.
An impartial fee appointed by Maine’s governor later concluded that there have been quite a few alternatives for intervention by each Military officers and civilian legislation enforcement.
Within the aftermath of the taking pictures, legislation enforcement officers testified earlier than the impartial fee that that they had issue implementing the state’s present yellow flag legislation, which they described as cumbersome and time-consuming.
Gun management proponents characterised that legislation as too weak and troublesome to implement. The yellow flag legislation requires police to take the doubtless harmful individual into protecting custody and maintain them for a psychological well being analysis.
The marketing campaign in favor of the pink flag legislation launched an advert this fall by which Arthur Barnard, father of Lewiston taking pictures sufferer Artie Strout, mentioned the stronger legislation may have saved his son’s life.
“People who find themselves having a psychological well being disaster need assistance, not quick access to weapons,” Barnard mentioned within the advert. “Maine’s legal guidelines have been too weak to avoid wasting my son’s life. Vote ‘Sure on 2’ to alter that.”
The pink flag proposal has encountered resistance from Republicans, looking teams, gun rights organizations and a few Democrats.
Maine is a state with comparatively low crime the place gun possession is widespread, and the state’s legal guidelines ought to mirror that, opponents have mentioned.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, opposed the poll query. She mentioned in October that the yellow flag legislation was “rigorously crafted” with Maine in thoughts, and it stays the proper legislation for the state.
“We discovered widespread floor on one of the vital controversial problems with our time,” Mills wrote in an opinion piece within the Portland Press Herald. “Query 2 would create a brand new, separate and complicated course of that can undermine the effectiveness of the legislation and endanger public security together with it.”
The poll query marketing campaign got here because the authorized aftermath of the Lewiston taking pictures remains to be unfolding.
The survivors and members of the family of victims of the lethal taking pictures have sued the US Military and the Division of Protection, searching for unspecified damages and arguing the US Military may have stopped Robert Card, the reservist, from finishing up the shootings.
Additionally they level to a Division of Protection watchdog report issued in September that faults the US Military for a excessive fee of failure to report violent threats by service members.
The report particularly mentions Card, who died by suicide two days after the shootings.
It says failure to persistently report violent threats “may improve the danger of further violent incidents by service members, reminiscent of what occurred with SFC (Sgt. 1st Class) Card.”
Card was within the midst of a psychological well being spiral that was recognized to many, and that led to his hospitalization and left him paranoid, delusional and expressing homicidal ideations, attorneys for the victims have mentioned.
Card’s members of the family and fellow reservists mentioned he had exhibited delusional and paranoid habits months earlier than the shootings.
One fellow reservist mentioned in a textual content: “I imagine he’s going to snap and do a mass taking pictures.”
