Red flag laws are increasingly being used to protect gun owners in crisis

NOTE : If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”

Adriana Pentz’s brother could be alive today.

In 2017, Luc-John Pentz was 30 years old and starting to struggle, burdened by life’s stressors and trying to cope by leaning heavily on alcohol. Adriana soon found out he had purchased a gun months earlier.

Of her three siblings, she had the most in common with Luc growing up — they were both academically driven and competitive swimmers. They remained close into adulthood, with Luc supporting her when she became a mother. So, when she noticed his behavior starting to shift, she was immediately troubled.

“I was scared when I found out that he had a gun,” she said. “I know that it offered him a sense of security, a sense of protection, which he felt like he needed at that particular point. But my siblings and my mom didn’t feel comfortable that he was not in a good place, and we knew he had something at home that was dangerous.”

Her brother died by suicide May 23, 2017, in the woods near his home in Wallingford, Connecticut.

What Adriana Pentz didn’t know at the time was that Connecticut had a law that would have allowed her, her family or police officers to petition a civil court to seize his gun when it was clear he was a potential harm to himself or others.

In 1999, Connecticut became the first state in the country to pass what is commonly known as a red flag law, which allows family members, law enforcement and sometimes health care workers, friends and co-workers to file what is often called an extreme risk protection order.

After considering evidence and hearing from both the petitioner and the gun owner, a judge may temporarily take a person’s weapon if they deem the gun owner to be a potential danger to themselves or the community. Orders usually last one year.

Now, 21 states and the District of Columbia have such laws. Voters in Maine will decide in November whether to join that list. The use of extreme risk protection orders has surged in recent years, with petitions filed across states that have such laws jumping by 59% in 2023 over the previous year, according to data collected by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control research and advocacy group.

But the laws’ effectiveness relies on their implementation, supporters say: Law enforcement and judges must be trained properly and the public needs to be aware that the law exists.

“The challenge in this is that too many people, too many law enforcement people, too many families, are not aware that there is an extreme risk law in their state,” Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown, told Stateline.

A Stateline analysis shows the usage rates rose from six petitions filed per 100,000 residents in 2022, to 10 per 100,000 in 2023. The analysis used Everytown’s petition data and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates for the District of Columbia and the 19 states with active red flag laws in 2023.

In 2023, there were 46,728 gun-related deaths in the United States, including suicides, murders and accidents, with a national rate of 14 gun deaths per 100,000 people, according to the latest data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Suicides accounted for nearly 6 in 10 of the gun deaths. Recent research on the protection orders’ impact estimates that one suicide is prevented for every 17 to 23 petitions filed. Based on this estimate, nearly 990 lives could have been saved in 2023 for every 17 petitions filed.

Pentz feels her brother’s death every day. “It was a horrible, horrible, horrible moment in our lives to have lost him,” she said.

“I know for sure that if it was something that I was aware of in 2017, I would have petitioned to have my brother’s gun taken from him in that moment of crisis. I do believe it could have saved his life.”

Training the police

As retired detective Christopher Carita travels around the country to meet with law enforcement agencies on how to better use their state’s red flag laws, he consistently hears one concern: Is this a gun grab?

“Law enforcement, we’re gun folks,” said Carita, who worked for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in Florida. “There’s always this hesitancy when it comes to risk protection orders and removing firearms that needs to be overcome.”

So, when he designed his training, he emphasized due process protections embedded in these laws: Gun owners get ample notice about the petition, and they have the right to defend themselves in court through multiple hearings. The laws are based off long-held domestic violence and other civil orders and are backed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“More often than not, the respondent understands,” said Carita, who works with 97Percent, a gun safety organization focused on including gun owners and non-gun owners in the conversation around policy solutions for gun violence.

“Even if they’re hesitant at first,” he said, “ultimately they’re appreciative that their family member cared enough to intervene, and that that intervention is something that is temporary and affords them some time and space away from the most lethal means to get the help they need.”

Carita encourages officers to build better relationships with their local Department of Veterans Affairs agency and area nonprofits, so they have someone they can refer the gunowner to when they’re removing a firearm for suicide risk.

Even before New Mexico imposed a red flag law in 2020, some law enforcement officials opposed it, citing concerns over Second Amendment rights and potential government overreach. In its first two years, police in the state filed only 23 petitions. Then in 2022, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham established a task force to raise awareness and improve enforcement of the law.

The number of petitions has increased significantly, rising from 47 in 2023 to 96 in 2024, according to court data. More than half of last year’s petitions were in Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction and home to Albuquerque, the capital.

In February, the New Mexico House passed a bill to streamline the process. The bill would clarify more clearly that police officers can directly file petitions and would remove the 48-hour waiting period for firearm relinquishment, addressing concerns that the delay could pose unnecessary risks. The legislation is now in the Senate.

Gun violence experts say the goal of red flag laws isn’t necessarily to increase their use for the sake of numbers, but to ensure they are applied in the most dangerous situations.

“We have to be realistic about expectations that [extreme risk protection orders] aren’t going to prevent all forms of firearm violence and lead to huge decreases in gun violence,” said Stephen Oliphant, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan.

After Maryland adopted its red flag law in 2018, Darrin Popkin, the executive director of both the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association and the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association, traveled the state to educate 17,000 law enforcement officers from 160 agencies on what he calls “another tool in the belt” for officers to save lives.

In the first six months of having the law, Popkin said, law enforcement prevented several potential school shootings. He’s received phone calls from people who said that if they didn’t have the gun-removal order, their family member would no longer be alive.

In recent years, the state police academies took over that training, teaching officers how to apply for a petition, testify in court and carry out the gun-removal order. The state also is investing in media and advertising outreach for the public, along with training health care workers.

According to data from Everytown, Maryland is a national leader in issuing extreme risk protection orders. In 2023, there were approximately 11 petitions filed per 100,000 Maryland residents.

Popkin, who until 2022 served as Montgomery County sheriff across the border from Washington, D.C., attributes the high numbers to how the legislation was crafted, a process that included perspectives from law enforcement officers, health care workers and gun rights advocates. He also points to how the people granting the orders, Maryland District Court commissioners, are available 24 hours a day.

“There will always be people in crisis,” Popkin said. “There will always be a need for people to get help.”

The next step, he said, is to increase the law’s usage among health care providers.

The ‘treatment and care’ approach

Whenever The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore treats someone who might be a danger to themselves or others and may own or be about to buy a weapon, the hospital contacts Quinita Garrett.

Garrett, the director of call center and system coordination for Baltimore Crisis Response Inc., a nonprofit crisis center known as BCRI, is leading a pilot program to test a partnership between a local hospital and social workers.

She’ll go to the hospital and visit the patient at their bed, asking about their mental health, whether they have access to a gun at home or through others, their intent on purchasing a weapon, and their history of aggression, violence, homicidal thoughts, suicidal thoughts or any attempts. She’ll also ask questions about their impulse control, if they want to hurt anyone and if they have a support system.

Sometimes, a person is just having a bad day, and they have support in their life and don’t own a weapon or plan on buying one. But other times, a person might have a history of aggressive or abusive behavior and may own a weapon, and she’ll quickly petition the Eastside District Court. She’ll see the process through until the end, testifying before a judge shortly after filing the petition.

It doesn’t happen often; over the past year and a half, she’s gone to the hospital around 15 times. But the number has been increasing recently to one or two requests a week, which she attributes to the hospital educating its staff.

Garrett also might be referred to cases through calls coming into BCRI’s local suicide prevention hotline.

She recalled talking with one mother in 2023 who was scared to live in her own house, worried that her son was going to kill himself or someone else. Garrett walked her through the process, and the mother eventually petitioned the court. Although her son was mad at her, at least she knew he and those around him were safe, Garrett remembers her saying.

“It can really save lives,” Garrett said. “I definitely think that is good as a temporary option, so people can actually be linked to treatment and care.”

Combining a law enforcement response with one centered on behavioral specialists, social service workers and medical professionals has led to a paradigm shift in Maryland and New York, the only two states that allow health care workers to file extreme risk protection orders, said Shannon Frattaroli, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. She’s led the nationwide effort for better implementation of red flag laws, training law enforcement or other government agencies that seek to further use extreme risk protection orders.

“When we think about how to make this accessible and less threatening, more therapeutic, starting the process with clinicians just makes a whole lot of sense,” she said.

In surveys that reached thousands of physicians, psychologists and clinicians, Frattaroli found that there is broad support for the idea of extreme risk protection orders. However, many think it is challenging to complete the paperwork and to get to court to see the process through on top of their full-time work.

That’s where partnerships with people like Garrett come in, she said. Court data that Frattaroli has collected shows that less than 1% of petitions are filed by clinicians; there’s vast room for improvement, she said.

Tightening judicial procedures

Indiana’s red flag law — passed in 2005 — came under scrutiny in 2021 following the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, where a gunman killed eight people and wounded several others.

Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears declined to file a red flag case against the shooter, even after Indianapolis police had seized a shotgun from him a year earlier. Police criticized that choice, but at the time, Mears said loopholes in the law could have led to the shotgun being returned to the shooter.

Without a court ruling barring the shooter from future gun purchases, he legally bought the Ruger AR-556 and the HM Defense HM15F rifles used in the attack.

Marion County Superior Judge Amy Jones then issued new guidance requiring all red flag cases filed by law enforcement agencies in the county to go directly to the court rather than the prosecutor’s office.

Under the revised process, police must file a case within 48 hours of seizing a firearm, and a judge then determines within 14 days whether a hearing should be held.

Cases are now being filed and resolved much more quickly, Jones told Stateline, and respondents are ensured due process. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow some red flag records to be sealed and expunged, while still ensuring that people later found to pose a danger can still have their firearms seized.

“Maybe it’ll be seized or taken away for a period of time, but following these proceedings, it may not be all that long in the grand scheme of things,” Jones said. “You do have that protection to the public and the people that this individual is around.”

Adriana Pentz, who lost her brother, knows family members often see troubling signs before anyone else. But whether they know extreme risk protection orders are available is another story.

Average people need to know how to create a petition, she said, and states and communities must do a better job of promoting red flag laws.

“Love and support just isn’t enough,” she said. “You absolutely need something that can help keep an individual and their surrounding community safe in a moment of crisis.”

Stateline reporter Matt Vasilogambros can be reached at mvasilogambros@stateline.org. Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.