Maine Republican legislators have a lot of explaining to do: Yellow Flag law failed

Editorial echo published in the Boston Globe:

After Maine shootings, our grim ritual returns: burying the dead, pleading for better gun laws.  With some of the region’s most permissive firearm laws, Maine has been a poster child for the nation’s political paralysis on gun safety.

Congressman Jared Golden

There are two important, if crushingly familiar, early takeaways from the massacre of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday evening, a death toll almost certain to rise. 

One is that the nation is facing a mental health crisis and has a critical shortage of mental health professionals to help it cope with that crisis.

The other is that it is far too easy to acquire firearms in Maine, particularly assault-style weapons whose main function is the swift and efficient killing of human beings, full stop.

Regarding the nation’s mental health crisis, there is much agreement across the political spectrum about the depth and breadth of the problem, as well as about the importance of doing more. 

Whether political leaders in Washington and state capitals can find the political will to allocate the required resources — and whether our educational institutions can recruit and train enough mental health caregivers — are works in progress.

But on the issue of imposing even the most common-sense restrictions on the powerful killing tools made by the firearms industry, the nation is hopelessly divided. Divided between liberals and conservatives, between rural areas and urban ones, even between men and women.

Maine is a poster child for the nation’s political paralysis on gun safety. Though the state government is controlled by the Democratic Party, the Legislature rejected a bounty of gun safety bills earlier this year, including a ban on rapid-fire devices, a 72-hour waiting period to purchase firearms and background checks for private gun sales.

Maine is among the nation’s most sparsely populated states — one where nearly half of adults have a gun at home and where hunting is a beloved pastime. That means that when it comes to gun issues, culture and geography may be as or even more important than party politics.

But once in a while, the hope of progress can rise from the ashes of tragedy. On Thursday, Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat from Lewiston who represents the vast northern half of Maine, declared that he had changed his mind about opposing a ban on assault weapons. In an emotional mea culpa, Golden, a former Marine infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, called his opposition to the ban “a failure” and pledged to work “with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.”

(Alas, Maine’s senior US senator, Susan Collins, said she would continue to oppose banning assault weapons. But Collins, a moderate Republican who played a constructive role in passage of a gun-safety measure in Congress last year, said she does support setting limits on high-capacity magazines, an incremental but valuable step.)

The real work, however, must start in Augusta. With the possible exception of Republican-dominated New Hampshire, Maine has the laxest gun laws in the Northeast. Currently, in Maine, there is little to stop, say, an abusive spouse from purchasing a semiautomatic weapon from an unlicensed dealer online or at a gun show because the state does not require background checks on private sales. Likewise, because the state does not have a waiting period on gun purchases, a person who is gripped by suicidal thoughts can walk into a gun store and purchase a handgun on the spur of the moment.

We still know little about the background and motives of the man accused in the Lewiston massacre, Robert R. Card II. An Army reservist, he was, according to various published reports, an expert marksman who, after living a quiet life on his family’s farm, struggled with mental health problems during the past year, including hearing voices at the bar and bowling alley where the killings occurred. Several outlets reported that he had received a mental health evaluation this summer due to “erratic” behavior and may have received treatment.

It also seems clear from surveillance photos that the man who killed or maimed all those people — those average Maine citizens who were innocently sipping beers or enjoying a night of bowling with friends — used a military-style assault rifle with its enhanced capability to rapidly fire more, and more lethal, rounds with the mere bending of a finger.

These details are sure to evolve as more reporting emerges. But huge questions remain. If in fact the suspect was hospitalized for mental health care, shouldn’t authorities have moved to have his firearms temporarily removed, as is allowed under the state’s so-called yellow flag law?

Gun safety advocates want to revise that law to make it simpler for family members to ask a judge to temporarily separate a person judged harmful to themselves or others from their firearms, as is allowed under stricter red flag laws that exist in 19 states. But one is left wondering whether anyone attempted to apply even the weaker yellow flag law to the alleged shooter. Did the alleged shooter’s family or Army Reserve colleagues even know it exists?

These are questions the Maine Legislature should begin debating. And a full range of laws, including a ban on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons, background checks on private sales, and a red flag law, should be on the table.

Opponents of gun safety laws will argue that, even with its lax laws, Maine has relatively little gun violence, that restrictions on gun ownership do not deter criminals, and that, well, the Second Amendment trumps all.

But suicide remains a major health issue in Maine, and nationally firearms are the most common means of killing oneself. Though the number of suicides declined last year from the previous year, the overall rate is well above two decades ago. And even the US Supreme Court, the most conservative and pro-gun court in decades, has said that some restrictions on gun ownership are constitutional.

Perhaps the most infuriating argument sure to come from gun rights activists is that most gun owners are law abiding and shouldn’t be put through the hassles and costs imposed by gun safety laws. They will also say that gun violence and mass shootings will occur with or without more restrictions.

The latter is of course true. But data show that the states with the lowest rates of gun fatalities — Hawaii and Massachusetts — also have among the most restrictive gun laws. And as to the former: Are we as a society prepared to say that inconveniences imposed on one group should outweigh the ability to save the lives of some, even a few, of our fellow citizens?

The choice should be clear.