See our home page for upcoming referendums.
We also offer Future Referendum Ideas — creative ideas to research and develop.
See also Past Referendums for 2020, 2022. and 2023, and 2024. There were none worth reporting for 2021.
Even-numbered years usually have many referendums and odd-numbered years have few. This year, there was only one that fit our criteria. Because the reasoning for why is better if it’s explained, and there’s no list since there’s only one, we leave the reasoning in.
Maine Question 2
Extreme Risk Protection Orders to Restrict Firearms and Weapons Access
Result: won with 63.2%
Mass Shootings: A Type of War
by Julia Smucker, a Maine voter
This initiative would create a process for Extreme Risk Protection Orders, also known as a red flag law, by which family members or law enforcement officers could petition to have a person’s weapons removed if they have reason to believe that person is at risk of harming themselves or others.
The campaign for this referendum in Maine is largely in response to the October 2023 mass shooting in the city of Lewiston that killed 18 people and injured 13, the deadliest in the state’s history. The shooter was Army Reserve Sergeant Robert Card, who had a recent history of brain injury and serious mental health concerns.
A group of shooting victims’ family members and survivors has recently filed a lawsuit against the United States government over the Army’s failure to act on the knowledge it had in order to prevent the violent outburst. One of the group’s lawyers said at a press conference:
Card was discharged from a psychiatric hospital on the condition that the Army remove his weapons. That never happened. And when Card’s best friend and fellow reservist warned their superiors that he thought Card was going to “snap and commit a mass shooting” six weeks before the tragedy no action was taken.
An even better way to prevent such tragedies would be not to send people into situations known to create serious mental health risks in the first place. Although the shooter in this case had not experienced combat, some evidence has suggested links between his brain injuries and blast exposure from military training. And, of course, an inherent component of military training is the normalization of violence.
Short of that type of deeper-rooted prevention, the chance to remove access to dangerous weapons from someone showing warning signs may still prevent the next potential tragedy from occurring.
Suicide Prevention
This comes from further discussion of a committee of the Consistent Life Network:
This measure is also intended to help prevent suicides. While “physician-assisted” suicide is a normal euphemism for euthanasia, gun-assisted suicides follow much of the same anti-life set of ideas and should also be prevented.
Because excessive suicides are a direct result of participation in other kinds of killing, preventing such suicides in the hope of getting better healing options is one of the ways of trying to undo the impact of socially-approved violence. See:
Suicide Prevention and Other Kinds of Killing
Military veterans are especially vulnerable to suicides and more inclined than others to use guns for the purpose because of their familiarity with them. See:
Heartbreakingly Common: Suicide Among Veterans
Tragedy Spreads: The Impact of Veterans’ Suicides on Families
See our blog: CLN Blog
Our weekly e-newsletter: Peace & Life Connections
Contact: CLNeditors @ googlegroups.com (remove spaces)