Dr. April Zeoli: “Red flag” gun laws
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Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have extreme risk protection order laws (also called “ERPO” or “red flag” laws) that can restrict a person’s access to guns if a court deems them a potential danger to themselves or the community. Maine voters will decide in November whether to adopt such a law, while other states are variously moving toward repealing or changing theirs.
On May 29, 2025, SciLine interviewed: Dr. April Zeoli, an associate professor of health management and policy and director of the Policy Core in the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
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Introduction
[0:00:19]
APRIL ZEOLI: My name is April Zeoli. I am an associate professor in health management and policy at the School of Public Health and director of the policy corps at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. And I study the impact and implementation of laws that restrict people who are identified as dangerous from temporarily having firearms.
Interview with SciLine
What are red flag laws?
[0:00:52]
APRIL ZEOLI: Red flag laws are also known as extreme risk protection orders, and these laws allow law enforcement in some states, family members, or health care providers to petition the court when they believe someone is at risk of harming themselves or others. So, take that evidence to the court and ask the court to temporarily relieve that person of their firearms so they won’t be able to possess or purchase firearms for some amount of time, usually a year.
Can you share any research on how often red flag laws are used and under what circumstances?
[0:01:36]
APRIL ZEOLI: How commonly they’re used depends on not only the state, but the county within the state. There’s a lot of geographic variation in how frequently they’re used. Some states, like Florida and Maryland, use them quite often. Now they’re used in really any type of circumstance in which someone is a danger to themselves or others. So, they’re used in cases of suicide risk. They’re used in cases of intimate partner violence, in cases of mass shooting threats, school violence risk, neighbors, you know, somebody threatening a person at a business. They’re used in all kinds of situations. They’re also used when somebody is cognitively unable to be safe with a gun, you know, at that time. So, we’ve seen them used with people who have dementia and may not be able to responsibly possess a gun.
What are red flag protocols, and how are they developed and implemented?
[0:02:54]
APRIL ZEOLI: Extremist protection order protocols are the processes by which law enforcement or whatever other agencies are involved in the extremist protection order process. It’s the process by which they go about using that extremist protection order. So, it will cover things like when to file an extremist protection order. Let’s think about law enforcement for a moment. There may be layers of approval a law enforcement officer has to go through before they’re able to take that petition to a court. There are also protocols for how to safely remove a firearm from somebody’s house, how to securely store that firearm for when that person is able to possess it again. All of these processes need to be figured out for each jurisdiction, and generally, people figure it out by, you know, coming together with all the groups that touch these processes. So, law enforcement, police precincts, sheriff’s offices, courts, potentially mental health services, you know, will come together and figure out how to work together and how to get this done in a way that is appropriate for their communities.
What does research show about the relationship between domestic violence and mass shootings?
[0:04:28]
APRIL ZEOLI: The majority of mass shootings involve the shooting of an intimate partner and/or family member, which makes the majority of mass shootings domestic violence incidents in and of themselves. An additional percentage where there wasn’t an intimate partner or a family member who was killed, have cases where the shooter has a history of domestic violence. Maybe a misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence. So, we know that domestic violence is present in a lot of these mass shootings. Most of it seems to be someone who wants to kill an intimate partner or family member and kills many people in addition—children and another family member for example—so that it reaches that definition of four or more people killed by being shot in one event that we use for mass shootings.
What is the difference between domestic violence protective order firearm restrictions and red flag laws?
[0:05:44]
APRIL ZEOLI: A domestic violence protective order is only available to people with domestic relationships. So, a current spouse, a former spouse, people with a child in common, live together dating partner. So, it’s only available for those people, and sometimes under state law or federal law, it will carry an order that says that the person under this can’t purchase or possess a firearm. And it does a lot of other things, too—custody of children, maybe temporarily arranged in that protective order, or finances may be arranged. How close the person under the order can get to the petitioner of the order, you know, might be in there. On the other hand, an extreme risk protection order is for one thing only—it is to remove a person’s access to firearms. Now, a lot of other things may happen, but under the law, it’s really about removing access to firearms, and it doesn’t have to only be about domestic violence—it can be about suicide risk, mass shooting threats. So anytime someone is at risk of harming themselves or others, law enforcement—or if you’re in a state that allows family members or health care providers to petition—they can also petition the court to temporarily suspend your access to firearms.
What is known about public opinion on red flag laws?
[0:07:35]
APRIL ZEOLI: Across the board, the majority of Americans approve of this kind of thing, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a firearm owner, a non-firearm owner, identify as a Democrat, identify as a Republican. By and large, you know all of these groups favor these laws, and I often think about it in terms of, well, they’re designed to prevent firearm death. So when faced with the knowledge that a loved one may be at risk of harming themselves or killing someone else, which also harms themselves, you know, people want to be able to prevent that, and they can use these extremist protection orders to do that in the states where they exist—21 states and the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. And again, these don’t involve a criminal record, so they can potentially use these to safeguard their loved ones in a way that is non-criminal.
How do people working in law enforcement view these laws?
[0:09:06]
APRIL ZEOLI: In Florida, only law enforcement can petition for these orders, and they have been using them in cases of risk. If they didn’t approve of them, they wouldn’t use them. And in fact, you know, we’ve had people when bills are being discussed, you know, there have been sheriffs that have said, I’m not going to use it. I don’t want to take away anybody’s guns. You know, I’m worried about, you know, whether it’s the right move, and when they get this tool, they tend to find a case that is really dangerous.
