MAINE, USA — People in Maine are reacting to a recently proposed red flag law, as lawmakers count down the days to meet their goal of passing preventative gun safety legislation before the end of the legislative session in Augusta.
Introduced by Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, a bill titled "An Act to Enact the Crisis Intervention Order Act to Protect the Safety of the Public" would allow family members to go before a judge to try to remove guns from a person who is suspected of posing a threat to themselves or others, if passed.
"The crisis intervention bill that is being proposed allows people to go directly to the court and to assess whether or not that person is dangerous based on their conduct," Margaret Groban, who is a board member of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, said. "Yellow flag did not go far enough, in allowing them to take away firearms from dangerous people."
This proposal comes after many raised concerns over the past year regarding Maine's current yellow flag laws in place, which require law enforcement to initiate the flag process.
Groban, who is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maine School of Law, has seen the positives with red flag laws in other states.
"They are really proven suicide prevention tools, and in Maine where our gun violence problem is mostly firearm suicide, I think that's a step that we should be taking," Groban added.
Some lawmakers are already on board with the idea, like Maine's Senate President Troy Jackson. He said joining the red flag bill with current yellow flag laws could strengthen safeguards in place to further prevent gun violence.
"I think they work in tandem," Jackson said. "What I think is that we can have both of these bills as tools for what Lewiston showed, which is we have a problem."
But others have raised concerns regarding the misuse of the bill. Auction House owner and gun owner Daniel Buck said he's wary that people won't be held accountable if a flag is created without merit.
"My reaction always is, gun owners are always in favor of new gun laws, provided they take the guns out of the hands of the 'bad guy' out there," Buck said. "They need to really make sure that whoever calls in and does this, if for some reason it's done for the wrong reasons, they need to be prosecuted."