People gather at Capitol Park in Augusta in November 2023 to demand gun safety legislation. Sofia Aldinio/Staff Photographer, file

Gun safety advocates are well on their way to securing enough signatures to ask voters to pass a red flag law that would make it easier to take away firearms from a person who poses a risk.

Organizer Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, said more than 500 volunteers at more than 100 polling places on Election Day collected about 60,000 signatures of voters who support the initiative. The coalition announced the ballot initiative in mid-September and needs at least 67,682 registered voter signatures to force the Legislature to either pass the law or send it to a statewide referendum.

“We’re very close,” Palmer said about the Election Day signature gathering effort. “It’s extraordinary, especially in an election where 47% of Mainers voted early. It really is an amazing showing.”

Palmer said petitioners reported overwhelmingly positive interactions with voters across the state – something she personally experienced while collecting signatures outside of a polling location in Topsham. Palmer said she received support from a wide variety of voters, including Republicans and gun owners.

“We’re not surprised that Maine voters had an overwhelming positive response on Tuesday and are ready to bring this commonsense policy to the ballot to save lives,” Palmer said. “A lot of people who want to make sure they are doing what they can to keep our community safe.”

Palmer said her group has not yet decided whether to pursue a referendum in November 2025 or in 2026, a year when Maine voters will elect a new governor. The group hopes to collect at least 75,000 signatures before submitting them to the state, just to be sure it exceeds the threshold, she said.

Waiting until 2026 would give lawmakers time to try to pass a version of the bill and avoid a costly voter referendum campaign.

“If we were to hold off until 2026 and the Legislature got it done in 2025, then it would obviously make it moot,” Palmer said.

Signatures would need to be submitted by Jan. 23 to make the 2025 ballot, or Feb. 2, 2026, for that year’s fall ballot.

If ultimately successful, Maine would join 21 other states and Washington, D.C., to codify an extreme risk protection order, or red flag law. A red flag law would allow police or family members to directly petition a court to remove access to firearms of someone who is a risk to themselves or others.

Maine considered a red flag proposal back in 2019. After backing such a bill in the Democratic primary, Gov. Janet Mills instead worked with the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine on a compromise bill that added due process requirements that make it more difficult to take away someone’s guns.

Maine’s law, referred to as a “‘yellow flag,” requires police to take the individual into protective custody so they can undergo a mental health evaluation before seeking a court order to restrict access to weapons.

The law has come under heavy scrutiny following the mass shooting in Lewiston last year.

A Sagadahoc County sheriff deputy didn’t take the shooter, Robert Card, into custody to begin the yellow flag process, despite concerns his family and fellow Army reservists expressed about Card’s threats and paranoia. Card went on to kill 18 people and wound 13 others at two locations.

Some police officers told a special commission appointed by Mills to study the events leading up to the shooting that Maine’s law is too cumbersome, with the process often taking an officer an entire shift to complete. And advocates say the law unnecessarily stigmatizes people with mental health challenges, who are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

The commission instead cast blame on the individual officer for not doing more to bring Card into custody and said that he should not have relied on Card’s family to restrict access to firearms. They also cited a breakdown in communication between the sheriff’s office and the Army.

After the shooting, the state ramped up training for local police departments, and the yellow flag law is now being used far more frequently – 412 times in the year following the shooting, compared to only being used 34 times in the preceding three years.

A last-minute red flag bill was proposed in the House of Representatives this year but never received a floor vote, leaving the current law in place.

Gun owners and Mills have defended the current law, saying the due process provisions are necessary to protect the law from a constitutional challenge. They point to increased use as proof that the yellow flag law is effective.

Lawmakers passed a suite of bills last session in response to the shooting, including significant investments in mental health crisis centers and instituting a three-day waiting period of firearm sales.

Gun rights groups have banded together and plan to file a lawsuit challenging the waiting period bill, though it’s unclear when they will move forward.