The military could soon be responsible for initiating so-called red flag orders under a new bill introduced by a bipartisan pair of Senators.
Susan Collins (R., Maine) introduced the “Armed Forces Crisis Intervention Notification Act” on Monday. Co-sponsored by Angus King (I., Maine), the bill would require military branches to utilize state extreme risk protection order laws where applicable when a service member is deemed by a commanding officer of posing a serious threat to themself or others. It would also require them to provide any relevant information or documentation to law enforcement and judicial personnel to support the execution of an extreme risk protection order proceeding.
“This bill would facilitate effective communication and coordination between state agencies and military service branches,” Collins said in a statement, “thereby helping to keep our communities safe and ensuring that service members in crisis get the assistance they need, without infringing upon the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”
The bill arrives roughly eleven months after a gunman murdered 18 people and wounded 13 others in two separate shootings in Lewiston, Maine. That attack became the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. The proposal takes direct aim at one of the oversights that allowed the shooter to maintain his access to the firearms used in the attack despite displaying a litany of warning signs beforehand.
Collins filed the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will likely be advanced by the Senate later this year. If Maine’s senators can attach the bill to the NDAA, a must-pass piece of legislation that funds much of the military, it will have a much greater chance of making it into law than it would as a standalone proposal.
The perpetrator of the Lewiston attacks was an Army Reservist who began exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior and issuing violent threats while on training exercises, prompting his unit to remove his access to weapons and briefly order him to a mental facility in New York. Despite this, neither the Army nor local law enforcement officers in Maine called to conduct multiple wellness checks on the shooter following his stay in the mental facility initiated Maine’s “yellow flag” law, which allows police to temporarily remove firearms from a person deemed a threat by a judge. Nobody followed up with the shooter after that, even though he continued to make threats.
Separate investigations conducted by the US Army Reserve, US Army Inspector General, and an independent commission ordered by Maine Governor Janet Mills (D.) all faulted members of the shooter’s unit and local law enforcement to varying degrees for failing to disarm him before he carried out his attacks.
“While the shooter was responsible for his horrific actions, multiple independent investigations revealed that there were numerous missed opportunities to potentially intervene and prevent this tragedy,” Collins said.
The bill would not create new federal extreme risk protection order proceedings, nor would it require states without such laws to adopt them. Instead, it would require military commanders to request a red flag order when an individual service member has made “a serious, credible threat of violence or when a service member has been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital” in a state where such proceedings already exist. Currently, 22 states plus the District of Columbia have some form of extreme risk protection order law.
In those instances, the bill would require the relevant branch of the armed forces to “tak[e] action, consistent with Federal law, available to third parties under an applicable state extreme risk protection order program” and “provid[e] to appropriate law enforcement or judicial personnel an accounting of the relevant material facts” to support the order being carried out. It also requires each branch to “fully participate” in the ongoing judicial proceedings related to the temporary confiscation orders, including whether to “impose, review, extend, modify, or terminate” an existing order.
The bill is currently awaiting review in the Senate Armed Services Committee. Collins did not respond to a request for comment on whether she has garnered additional support for the policy beyond Senator King, who is the only co-sponsor as of Tuesday.
