
Under the current law, known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order, law enforcement can detain someone who they deem a threat to themselves or others, or confiscate someone’s weapons after a mental health evaluation is completed.
Last week, advocates with the Maine Gun Safety Coalition submitted 80,000 signatures to put a stricter “red flag” law on the ballot this November, which would also allow family members to directly petition a judge to temporarily limit someone’s access to firearms when they are in crisis.
Maine is the only state to have a yellow flag law, which Mills helped draft with help from the pro-gun Sportsmans Alliance of Maine. However, the law came under criticism last year for not being used by the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Department to take guns away from Lewiston shooter Robert Card II after reports of threatening behavior and concerns about his mental health.
But Mills said the law is working, and has been used 672 times so far by law enforcement agencies to take firearms away from those who should not have them.
“I also don’t believe a private citizen should have to navigate what can be a complex and confusing court procedure by themselves, especially in the middle of already difficult circumstances,” she said. “It is the government’s responsibility, not that of a private citizen, to protect the public from gun violence.”
— Eesha Pendharkar in In budget address, Gov. Mills takes swipe at gun safety citizen initiative
“But Mills said the law is working, and has been used 672 times so far by law enforcement agencies to take firearms away from those who should not have them.“
Soo…by saying they should not have them (guns), the Governor is saying those 672 recipients of ERPO action were all properly adjudicated via due process as being felons, or is he merely stating his personal opinion?
The Maine ‘yellow flag’ law is the only ERPO law (if dealing with guns) in the nation that affords some legitimate due process when it comes to gun seizures. There are zero ‘Red Flag’ laws in the nation that have legitimate due process.
Due process has always been a problem for democrats and gun grabbers, they simply do not want any person, not just gun people, to have any due process that can hinder them – exactly like Marx -ist Socia-lism wanted by use of ‘community property reasons’ (In communist Russia, one did not have actual due process because of this because the party could proclaim ‘community property’ which is really a euphemism for ‘your property belongs to the state – it is the parallel to our ‘community care taking’ exemption to the 4th but more broad.
Biden tried to do away with it for firearms by sending his DOJ in to intervene in the Caniglia v. Strom case, tried to have the exemption to the forth amendment of ‘community care taking’ broadened to allow the local cops to escape their unconstitutional search and seizure with no due process violations just cause they said so. Biden really wanted that to happen, thankfully SCOTUS saw through that ploy and ruled for Caniglia. Had it gone the other way Biden could have simply said ‘its a national health emergency’ and have law enforcement/military enter peoples homes to confiscate firearms without warrant or cause – it could have also been used against anyone the government didn’t like by simply saying ‘community care taking ’cause we say so… imagine journalists having their homes raided and them thrown in jail because they wrote something critical of government ‘case the government was able to claim ‘community care taking cause we say so’. So once again, the 2A right to keep and bear arms provided a means of protection for constitution and all Americans.