TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to Wednesday's mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, which killed at least 18 people and left many more injured, by echoing former President Donald Trump's 2018 calls to institutionalize more people as a way to prevent more shooting deaths.
On a Thursday evening appearance on CNN, DeSantis framed the shooting as a failure of the nation's mental health system in light of the fact that the man responsible for the shooting had recently reported hearing voices and made threats to shoot up a National Guard base.
The shooter had also reportedly spent two weeks in a medical facility prior to the shooting.
"I think the question is, is why wasn't he committed beyond that?...I think an involuntary commitment would have kept him off the street, and I think that would have done the trick," DeSantis said.
The governor also pushed back on the idea that a red flag law, like the one currently on the books in Florida, could have helped prevent the shooting.
"I’ve always said, if you're not mentally competent to own a firearm, that's something different than red flag. What red flag is, is people would go in, and say you may be a danger. So, you could have someone lodge a complaint. Different states do it differently, oftentimes with not adequate due process," DeSantis said.
Florida's red flag law, which was enacted in 2018 after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, and which DeSantis claimed he would have vetoed during his first gubernatorial campaign, allows law enforcement officials to ask a civil court to issue something called a "risk prevention order."
That order prohibits someone deemed dangerous to themselves or others from possessing or buying a gun.
According to The Associated Press, the process is a civil matter. Someone doesn’t need to be suspected of a crime for an order to be sought. A request can be prompted by a mental health crisis or a display or threat of violence.
Multiple law enforcement officials have voiced their support for Florida's red flag laws, including Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd who previously told CNN that the risk protection order serves as a "cooling off period" for people behaving dangerously that allows law enforcement to focus on the prevention of shootings.
