Maine law­mak­ers rein­force ‘yel­low flag’ law and expand back­ground checks six months after mass shoot­ing

In the wake of the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in Maine his­to­ry six months ago, Demo­c­ra­t­ic state law­mak­ers have tak­en action.
The Maine leg­is­la­ture passed bills strength­en­ing the state’s “yel­low flag” laws, which aim to strip guns away from those suf­fer­ing from psy­chi­atric health crises. That leg­is­la­tion would have tak­en the Lewis­ton shooter’s firearms away after he punched a fel­low Army reservist.
Oth­er leg­is­la­tion passed would expand back­ground checks for pri­vate sales of guns and make it a crime to sell a gun to some­one who is pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing guns. The bill also would fund vio­lence pro­tec­tion ini­tia­tives and open a men­tal health cri­sis receiv­ing cen­ter in Lewis­ton.
The Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture also vot­ed to include a 72-hour wait­ing peri­od to pur­chase a firearm and ban bump stocks, but it did not insti­tute a “red flag” law pro­posed by House Speak­er Rachel Tal­bot Ross that would give fam­i­ly mem­bers instead of police the author­i­ty to peti­tion a judge to remove guns from a per­son in a psy­chi­atric cri­sis.
The leg­is­la­ture worked overnight to force the leg­is­la­tion throug …