Maine Senator Susan Collins is Pushing for Gun Control for United States Military Units
Jose Nino
|
Maine Senator Susan Collins has recently drafted legislation to mandate that the United States military adopt red and yellow flag laws for United States military units. These laws are already present at the state level.
Red flag laws grant family, friends, and other acquaintances to obtain a court order to confiscate firearms from an individual they perceive as a danger to himself or others.Yellow flag laws have a more narrow scope in how they grant law enforcement officers the power to obtain the court order for gun confiscation.
Collins’ legislation came as a response to the October 25, 2023, Lewiston, Maine, massacre, which was carried out by a US Army Reserve member.
The gunman used a sniper rifle which he legally bought.
Interestingly, Maine has a yellow flag law on the books. However, law enforcement was notified that the Maine shooter could “snap and commit a mass shooting” in September, per a CNN report. In the end, no yellow flag action was pursued.
On top of that, Breitbart News pointed out that on October 26, 2023, law enforcement in New York sent Card to a West Point hospital for a check-up in the middle of July in 2023.
Military officials became aware of Card’s sketchy behavior after he started “acting erratically in mid-July” while participating in training at West Point, per an Associated Press report. Law enforcement in New York were summoned and Card was sent off to West Point’s Keller Army Community Hospital.
In a WMTW report published on December 22, 2023, Collins was reported to have been “working on a bill that would require branches of the military to utilize state-level weapons restriction laws, when appropriate, if they believe a service member poses a threat of harm to themselves or others.”
Gun control simply won’t solve the many mental health issues that abound in the US. Thanks to the mass closure of mental health institutions in the 1980s, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mentally ill individuals walking on our streets. Many of these people could potentially become mass shooters.
Lawmakers would be better off fixing the country’s mental health infrastructure as opposed to passing gun control to address the US’s gun violence problems.
Share: