The Pine Tree State’s legislature failed to pass a “Red Flag” law in 2024, so some backers of gun control launched a campaign to put it on the ballot.
Despite passing a barrage of gun control measures in 2024 in response to the 2023 Lewiston shooting, an extension of the state’s already-existing “yellow flag” law – which allows police to petition to have someone disarmed – did not pass through the Maine legislature.
The push for a “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation law calls for allowing both family members and police to ask judges to confiscate guns from people deemed to be “dangerous.”
Laws like these are relatively flawed – as even the state’s current “yellow flag” law gave police a way to seize the Lewiston shooter’s guns in the weeks before he carried out the attacks.
Under “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation laws, government agents can be dispatched to a person’s home based off a complaint and seize lawfully-owned firearms with no prior notice or a crime being committed.
In short, these laws allow for zero due process.
In fact, Florida is a state with such a law on the books, and in the last five years, 10,000 citizens in Florida have been stripped of their Second Amendment rights without a crime being committed.
The effort in Maine cannot appear on the ballot until at least 2025, which means supporters will have to gather nearly 68,000 signatures from registered voters by the end of January.
Read more at Bearing Arms.
