James LaPlante remembers hearing how Robert Card was experiencing paranoia in the months before he killed 18 people and injured a dozen more in the Lewiston mass shooting. It sounded familiar. Three years earlier, LaPlante’s brother, Stephen, was worried his friends were spreading lies that he was a pedophile and that a grocery store clerk who giggled was in on the rumor. Card had made similar claims to friends and family. LaPlante contacted police after his brother started stockpiling guns, but police said there wasn’t enough evidence for them to intervene and LaPlante was unable to get his brother the help he needed to stop him from acting on his worst impulses. In 2020, Stephen died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His brother’s death is the reason LaPlante now supports a red flag law in Maine a proposal that would allow family members, in addition to police, to initiate a weapons removal process if a person poses a risk to themselves or others. The law also would eliminate the requirement in Maine’s existing yellow flag law that a person first be taken into custody for a mental health evaluation. “The big thing for the red flag law for me is it enables family members to take action,” said LaPlante, who lives in South Portland. “And family members are the ones who are going to know if someone is in a mental health crisis.” LaPlante is among dozens of Mainers who have pleaded with lawmakers over the last two years for stronger gun control. After the Legislature failed to take up a red flag proposal last year in the aftermath of the Lewiston mass shooting, gun safety advocates organized a signature gathering campaign to get a citizen’s initiative on the ballot. That measure will now go to voters statewide on Nov. 4 as Question 2. Many people directly impacted by gun violence support a red flag law family members, like LaPlante, and friends who have lost loved ones to gun suicides, as well as survivors of the Lewiston shooting and victims of other crimes involving firearms. Opponents, some of whom also survived the mass shooting, say it weakens due process for gun owners and have argued that a red flag law already in place in 21 other states would not have prevented what happened in Lewiston. “They could have used the yellow flag here in Maine and they never did,” Destiny Johnson, a Lewiston survivor, says in a campaign video released this week urging people to vote no on Question 2. ‘IT COULD HAVE ALLOWED ME TO GO TO THE COURTS’ LaPlante encouraged his brother to move in with their mother in Naples after he got caught up in drugs and was “hanging with the wrong crowd” in Massachusetts, where the brothers had grown up. At one point, he said, Stephen was voluntarily committed to a mental hospital after attempting suicide. The move to Maine was good for Stephen at first, LaPlante said, but he still struggled with bipolar disorder that prevented him from working. His mental health worsened when the pandemic hit. He stopped playing guitar and started focusing on collecting replica and BB guns, and eventually real firearms. “During COVID, his paranoid ideations very quickly went to, ‘Society is going to collapse and I have to be ready for it, and people are after my stuff,’” LaPlante said. “He started to just amass weapons.” LaPlante said he got particularly concerned after his brother woke their mother up in the middle of the night while he was on the roof with a rifle looking for people he thought were coming to take their belongings. Around the same time, he said Stephen became convinced friends of his from Massachusetts were spreading rumors that he was a pedophile. “Being in that scenario was really hard,” LaPlante said. “I felt stuck.” LaPlante said he contacted police but was told there wasn’t much they could do unless Stephen committed a crime. In his research on the yellow flag law, which had just taken effect in July 2020, he found that police were struggling to arrange the mental health assessments needed to confiscate firearms. Stephen died in September. LaPlante said he believes the outcome could have been different had a red flag law been in place. “It could have allowed me to go to the courts and say as a family member that I’m concerned he has been suicidal in the past,” he said. Supporters of the red flag law say it could be especially helpful in reducing firearm suicides, and research has shown that red flag laws in other states can be an effective part of suicide prevention. LEWISTON SURVIVORS’ VIEWS While police initially struggled to connect with medical practitioners to conduct the required mental health assessments in the early days of the yellow flag law, a telehealth contract with the Portland nonprofit behavioral health provider Spurwink has since helped streamline the process. Then, a state investigation into the Lewiston shooting which found it could have been used by law enforcement increased awareness and training among police, and its use has skyrocketed. State officials recently announced the law has been used more than 1, 000 times, all but 81 of those coming after the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shooting. But some survivors still say a red flag law would be beneficial. Among the most vocal is Arthur Barnard, whose son Artie Strout was killed at Schemengees Bar & Grille. Barnard has lobbied at the State House in favor of the law and last month appeared in an ad on behalf of the Yes on Question 2 campaign. “Nobody knows if a family member is off-kilter faster than a family member,” Barnard said in an interview. “I believe that. Who knows that person better than their family?” Jennifer Zanca of Auburn, who was shot in the left shoulder at Schemengees, is also in favor of a red flag law. Zanca said that while she generally favored gun safety laws prior to the shooting, it made her think harder about what can be done to prevent such violence. “I just feel like what we’re doing is not working,” she said. “It’s getting worse.” The red flag proposal offers a more streamlined alternative and gives families a way to remove weapons from a person in crisis, she said. “I feel safe knowing there are laws in place to take away guns from people who are having a mental health crisis, or who have gone psychotic and their family members see that,” Zanca said. She was part of a group of four friends who went to Schemengees for dinner following a golf outing the night of the shooting. Among them was Johnson, the woman who recently appeared in the video for Protect Maine − No Red Flag, a group opposing Question 2 that is led by the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine with a powerful lobby. In testimony before the Legislature last spring, Johnson elaborated on her opposition to a red flag law, saying Mainers need to be able to defend themselves in public places. “Why would the state of Maine put a red flag law in place now, when they never enforced the yellow flag law to begin with?” she said in written testimony. IS MAINE’S CURRENT LAW ENOUGH? David Trahan, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance, who worked with Gov. Janet Mills to pass the yellow flag law, is a leading opponent of Question 2. He said he empathizes with anyone impacted by gun violence, including the many victims and survivors who have testified to lawmakers in support of a red flag law. “But I’d love to sit down and talk with some of them because I believe our (yellow flag) law is better than red flag, and so does the governor, and so do state police,” Trahan said, referring to Mills’ and Maine State Police’s opposition to the red flag proposal. State police have said that family members can already initiate weapons removal by contacting law enforcement, and have expressed concerns that it will be more dangerous for them to try and remove weapons because the changes could mean someone is not already in protective custody when police go to remove their guns. Supporters of the red flag law refute the idea that weapons removal would be more dangerous, saying law enforcement have inherently dangerous jobs and red flag laws are already working safely in several other states. Mills has said that the yellow flag law, which she helped draft with gun rights and safety groups, has already proven effective, while also protecting Second Amendment rights. She has argued it’s important for police to be involved in navigating what can be a confusing court process and that it’s the responsibility of law enforcement, not private citizens, to protect the public. LaPlante says he doesn’t see the option to use red flag as something that would be burdensome for family members, and said it is set up to work more quickly than the existing law. “You’re giving people the opportunity to seek help,” LaPlante said. “That’s not a burden.” He and other proponents acknowledge that it’s not a guarantee to prevent a loved one’s suicide or another mass shooting and point out that there are other steps Maine could also take to improve gun safety, such as closing background check loopholes and improving access to mental health care. But they said it’s a step in the right direction and that there’s no harm in giving families the choice of another tool. “This law is about preventing gun tragedies and saving lives,” said Judi Richardson, whose daughter, Darien Richardson, died after she was shot in a home invasion in Portland in 2010. Richardson and her husband, Wayne, are gun owners who didn’t think too much about whether Maine’s laws could be improved prior to their daughter being killed, she said. Then they started connecting with other families around the country who had been impacted by gun violence, and said it opened their eyes to the need for change. While the home invasion and homicide are still unsolved, Richardson said she can’t say if a red flag law would have helped in her daughter’s case. But she said it can generally improve safety. “It may not pertain in my situation, but if we can prevent other injuries and deaths, that’s what we’re advocating for,” Richardson said.
https://www.centralmaine.com/2025/10/16/for-mainers-impacted-by-gun-violence-red-flag-referendum-is-personal/