Michiganders filed nearly 400 requests to have firearms confiscated from individuals believed to pose a risk to themselves or others during the first year of the state's new “red flag” laws.
The laws allow police officers, health care providers, family members, romantic partners or roommates to request an Extreme Risk Protection Order if they believe someone poses a threat to the safety of themselves or others.
The orders last one year but can be contested.
Judges across the state approved 287 orders – about three-quarters of the requests – and denied 84 others.
Eight of the approved orders were later rescinded after being challenged.
Sky Thietten, who is on the steering committee for End Gun Violence Michigan, said the denials show the laws are not being applied overly broadly.
“This law is working, and the civil system, the court system, is doing due diligence,” Thietten said.
Six of the 391 requests filed statewide were in Ingham County, according to Ingham County Prosecutor’s office spokesperson Scott Hughes, though it was not immediately clear how many of the six had been approved.
Danielle Hagaman-Clark, the Michigan Department of Attorney General’s criminal justice bureau chief, said that law enforcement is likely the “primary driver” of the petitions. She said in the future, the state should have more educational programs to increase awareness of the new laws for other groups who can file the petitions.
At least 31 individuals affected by the orders were later charged with criminal offenses, which were most commonly related to domestic violence.
But Hagaman-Clark pointed out that those people charged with crimes accounts for a relatively small portion of the 287 orders approved statewide.
Many of the others could have been at risk of harming themselves, Hagaman-Clark said, or may have had violent ideations amid a temporary mental health crisis.
“ERPO is designed as a civil remedy to try to keep communities safer and try to keep people safer rather than dumping them into the criminal justice system by charging them with different crimes,” Hagaman-Clark said. “This really acts as an opportunity for folks to receive help when they so desperately need it.”
Going forward, Hagaman-Clark said the state should consider additional follow-ups to connect respondents with mental health resources and ensure they are doing better before the orders expire and they get their firearms back.
“We’re taking these guns away, but we’re not offering folks resources or referrals to make sure that whatever mental health crisis they’re experiencing at that moment is being addressed in the long-term,” Hagaman-Clark said.
The report says the data on race, age and gender is incomplete, which Hagaman-Clark said is in part because Michigan’s courts don’t share a single data reporting system.
But it does show that a majority of the requests were for men to be restrained by the orders, accounting for at least 201 of the requests, with the gender of an additional 158 respondents unknown. Women account for 32 of the requested orders.
The laws took effect on Feb. 13, 2024, exactly one year after the deadly shooting at Michigan State University.
Thietten said it is difficult to measure the full impact of the laws since their success involves preventing events from coming to fruition.
“It’s impossible to measure how many lives will be saved in incidents of mass violence,” Thietten said.
But she said that if Michigan’s rates of domestic violence, homicides and suicide by gunfire decline, while the number of orders issued under the new laws increases, that will be a sign they’re working.