Imagine you live next door to a man who is known around the neighborhood for wielding a handgun any time he answers his door. Who has indicated he hears voices and has displayed other signs of clinical paranoia. Who is known to have a stockpile of a dozen or more firearms at home. Who has threatened in public to shoot people.

Imagine that the neighbor — who has previously been treated for mental illness — is now behaving in such alarming ways that his family has attempted to get his guns away from him, and that his fellow Army reservists have contacted local police saying they're concerned he could snap and go on a shooting spree.

Now imagine further that you live in a state where the laws are such that there is little the police can do about this situation until the shooting starts.

If you're reading this in Missouri, you live in such a state. Ditto with Maine, where the mentally ill Army reservist described above killed 18 people in a rampage last month before killing himself.

In fact, these two states and about 20 others across the U.S., along with Congress, still refuse to institute red-flag laws designed to allow courts to disarm people who are displaying signs of mental illness. This despite overwhelming public support for such laws, even among gun owners; despite widespread evidence they work; despite the most fundamental common sense.

Army reservist Robert Card's bloody shooting spree at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, on Oct. 25 was a tragic textbook example of the real-world consequences of this outrageous failure of public policy.

Five months before the shooting, Card's family contacted the local sheriff's office to express concern that he was experiencing mental health issues and shouldn't have access to weapons, CBS News reported.

Three months before the shootings, Card's Army Reserve superiors determined after a medical evaluation that he was "non-deployable" due to mental health issues.

And less than six weeks before the shootings, Card's military unit contacted local law enforcement to request a wellness check based on a fellow soldier's warning that Card's behavior indicated he might "snap and commit a mass shooting," according to reporting by CNN. (Police were unsuccessful in talking with him.)

If Maine had had in place a red-flag law to allow family and police to appeal directly to a judge to have Card's weapons temporarily confiscated, his 18 victims might still be alive.

But when Maine lawmakers in 2019 were attempting to pass a red-flag law, the gun lobby managed to water it down into a so-called "yellow-flag" law. The Maine statute implemented that year requires that before a court can disarm someone who is displaying signs of mental illness, the police must first take the person into custody and a mandatory medical assessment must confirm a mental-illness diagnosis.

So the escalating extremism of America's gun culture has come to this: When people show clear signs of mental instability, having them arrested and forcibly examined is a more acceptable response than confiscating their guns.

The Maine law has been criticized as mostly unworkable for that very reason — relatives who believe someone should be disarmed won't necessarily act on it if it means having them led away in cuffs. According to The Boston Globe, the Maine law has been invoked fewer than 90 times since 2020, mostly in cases involving potential suicide.

The red-flag issue has special relevance in Missouri. As in Maine, the lack of this simple remedy is likely responsible for shooting deaths here, if on a smaller scale.

Former Republican U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, long among the most staunchly pro-gun lawmakers in Congress, moderated that stance last year before leaving office by signing onto the Biden administration's tepid but better-than-nothing federal gun package. That package didn't require red-flag laws anywhere, but did provide incentives for states that institute them.

Yet even that weak tea was too much for Missouri's gun-obsessed Republican majority in the Legislature. Not only did they refuse to take advantage of the federal incentives to pass a red-flag law, but 47 GOP state lawmakers signed a letter demanding that Blunt pull his support for the federal bill.

Four months later, a mentally ill 19-year-old — whose family had tried to keep guns out of his possession but couldn't because there was no legal mechanism in Missouri to do it — shot up St. Louis' Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. He killed student Alexzandria Bell, 15, and teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, and wounded several others before police killed him.

Missouri's Legislature, despite its arguable culpability, still wasn't moved to reconsider its bullheaded opposition to a common-sense red-flag law. The tragedy in Maine won't do it, either. After all, these are the same lawmakers who (talk about a clear sign of mental instability) defeated a measure this year that would merely have specified that children aren't allowed to carry guns around in public. On firearms, these folks are immune to common sense and beyond convincing.

Fully 60% of Missourians favor the modest, rational step of keeping guns from the mentally ill, according to a St. Louis University/YouGov poll this year. Yet the only way they will ever achieve that imperative is by sending a saner delegation to Jefferson City. Until then, you'll just have to keep an eye out for that unstable neighbor.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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