Luc-John Pentz of Connecticut was 30 years old, struggling leaning heavily on alcohol. His sister Adriana found out he had purchased a gun. Her brother died by suicide May 23, 2017, in the woods near his home.
What Adriana Pentz didn’t know 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 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 hearing from both the petitioner and the gun owner, a judge may temporarily take a person’s weapon if the gun owner is 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,, Stateline reports.
The laws’ effectiveness relies on their implementation. 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,” said Everytown's Sarah Burd-Sharps.
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.
In 2023, there were 46,728 gun-related deaths in the U.S., 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.
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 of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan.