How Maine can start fixing its gun laws

As details about last week’s massacre of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, continue to trickle out, one fact stands out with piercing clarity: Just how many people believed the shooter was in deteriorating mental health and a potential danger to himself or others.

And one other: The shooter, Robert Card, was a skilled marksman who owned numerous guns, among them powerful assault weapons.

The Lewiston bloodbath is fast becoming a national case study in how one state’s porous system of firearms regulation — the most lax in the Northeast — made it far too easy for a demonstrably threatening man to bring an assault weapon into a restaurant and bowling alley to kill 18 fellow citizens.

Maine Governor Janet T. Mills announced Wednesday she will form an independent commission to investigate “what more could have been done to prevent this tragedy from occurring.” Meanwhile, strengthening Maine’s gun laws — and in particular, enacting a socalled red flag law allowing authorities to temporarily remove firearms from people deemed threats to themselves or others — should be the first order of business for the Maine Legislature when it returns to business early next year.

The Globe has provided a detailed timeline of Card’s threatening behavior that is tragic in its consistency:

In May, Card’s teenage son and former wife told a deputy in the Sagadahoc County Sheriff ’s Department that the shooter was hearing voices and had recently picked up 10 to 15 guns that had been stored with his brother. Card’s brother told the same deputy that Card seemed angry and paranoid. Several people in Card’s Army Reserve unit also told the deputy that they were concerned about his mental health and wanted him to get care.

In July, Card got into fights with fellow reservists because he thought they were insulting him, prompting unit commanders to have Card involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital in New York. After that commitment, the Army told Card’s commander that he should not have a weapon, handle ammunition, or participate in live-fire activity while on duty. That order does not appear to have prevented Card from purchasing or possessing guns as a civilian, the Globe reported.

In September, Card’s Army Reserve commanders requested a “wellness check” from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff ’s Department after Card punched a fellow reservist who had warned him “he was going to get into trouble talking about shooting up places and people.” That fellow reservist also sent texts to a training supervisor warning that Card “has guns and is going to shoot up the drill center at Saco and other places.” The reservist urged the Reserve to change a base passcode so that Card could not get access to firearms.

Sheriff ’s deputies did visit Card’s home twice, but he did not answer the door. And that, apparently, was that. But what is uniquely galling here is that the sheriff ’s department or other law enforcement officials could have done more, even under Maine’s weak gun laws.

Indeed, Card seems a textbook example for using the state’s yellow flag law, under which officials could have taken him into custody, sought a mental health determination about his threatening nature, and had a judge order the temporary confiscation of his firearms. Why those authorities chose not to use that law — did they even know it exists? — should be part of the commission’s review of this case.

But beyond the halting response to the brightly flashing warning signs about Card, this massacre underscores the need for Maine to enact stronger measures, starting with a red flag law. Those laws, which have been passed in 21 states plus the District of Columbia, allow law enforcement agencies, and sometimes others including relatives, prosecutors, and health care providers, to petition courts to have firearms temporarily confiscated from people deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others.

The laws require fewer steps than Maine’s yellow flag law and have been found by researchers to prevent both suicides and mass shootings, according to studies compiled by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Lisa Geller, the senior advisor for implementation at the center, said the yellow flag law is not only ineffective for addressing imminent risks but also doesn’t address the fact that many potentially violent people do not have diagnosable mental health problems. “We argue it should be based on risk factors for violent behavior, not mental health diagnoses,” she told the Globe editorial board.

There are many other important gun safety measures that Maine needs, none of which would seriously limit the ability of law-abiding, qualified people to purchase or possess firearms. Those include universal background checks, limits on the size of magazines, waiting periods for purchasing weapons, and a ban on assault weapons, the military-style firearms designed for swift and efficient mass killing.

Under Maine’s legislative rules, the Democratic-controlled Legislature next year cannot take up bills that were disposed of during their session earlier this year, a category that includes some of the above measures.

But Mills, also a Democrat, can introduce any legislation she chooses, and she absolutely should exercise that power come the new year to propose major gun safety measures, including a red flag law. She has opposed many of these measures in the past, but post-Lewiston, she has said that she is “not taking anything off the table.”

“I believe action is needed — what that action will be must be the product of a broad discussion among a diverse group of voices,” the governor said this week. “The people of Maine deserve this.”

Supporters of gun rights in the Maine Legislature — and there are many of them — would do well to listen to the governor and to heed the change of heart shown by Representative Jared Golden, who announced his support for an assault weapon ban after the massacre in Lewiston, his hometown. The facts on the ground demand as much. The families of the victims are owed much more.

In particular, enacting a so-called red flag law allowing authorities to temporarily remove firearms from people deemed threats to themselves or others — should be the first order of business for the Maine Legislature when it returns to business early next year.