This story by Sara Wilson appeared on Colorado Newsline on Monday July 29, 2024. We are sharing it an two parts.
In early June 2023, a La Plata County man showed up to his therapist’s office with a drastic style change — instead of the flannel and cowboy boots he typically wore, he was outfitted in black combat boots, a T-shirt with a skull on it and a necklace that appeared to be made out of fake human teeth.
It was a sign of trouble. Two weeks later, he told his mental health provider, who had been seeing him for about a year for vague homicidal ideation, that he was on administrative leave from work and likely to be fired after talking to co-workers about corpses and death. One week after that, he said he wanted to cause severe injury or kill a former co-worker after their shift in the parking lot.
His therapist said they planned to contact law enforcement over the threat.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” he responded, according to court records in the county. “I know myself and I’m not going to lie.”
The therapist ended up filing a petition for an extreme risk protection order against their client, asking a judge to remove any of his guns and block his ability to purchase firearms for one year.
A county judge granted a temporary ERPO right away. A few weeks later, the judge issued the yearlong order.
In the 15 months since Colorado expanded the types of people who can use the state’s “red flag” law, few educators and mental health professionals have asked a court to remove guns from a potentially dangerous person.
Since the law went into effect on April 28, 2023, just 10 of over 200 petitions across the state came from the additional categories of eligible petitioners, according to a Colorado Newsline analysis.
“It’s still a win — 5% is better than 0%. We’ve got to start somewhere, and maybe that’s where it is,” said state Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat who sponsored Colorado’s original red flag law and its 2023 expansion. “We continue to find out that people who need the information about how to file petitions still don’t know how to do that. We’ve got to continue to stay on top of it.”
Colorado implemented its ‘Extreme Risk Protection Order’ law, colloquially known as the red flag law, in 2020. It allows certain people to ask their county or district court to temporarily ban someone from possessing or buying guns to prevent self-harm or harm to others. The original law allowed law enforcement, family members, roommates and other people with personal relationships to the respondent to file a petition. A judge ultimately decides whether to grant the order based on evidence and a hearing.
During the law’s first few years, private individuals filed most petitions, but law enforcement requests were much more likely to result in an order, according to an analysis from Colorado Public Radio.
The law’s scope and effectiveness came into question following the 2022 Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, in which the shooter had a history of violent threats that law enforcement knew about. They did not petition for an ERPO against the shooter — claiming an existing mandatory protection order made an order redundant — but El Paso County is one of many Colorado jurisdictions that declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and would limit or reject use of ERPOs.
In 2023, lawmakers expanded the law to also allow educators, doctors, mental health professionals and district attorneys to file petitions. At the time, bill sponsors said it was a way to extend use of the red flag law, especially in areas where local law enforcement is reluctant to seize someone’s guns. Professionals who interact with a potentially dangerous person at school, in a therapy session or at the doctor’s office now have a method to alert a judge about their concerns.
“For patients at imminent risk of harm to themselves or others, extreme risk protection orders are potentially life saving interventions that help to prevent an at risk person for accessing highly lethal means such as firearms, which are extremely lethal when used in suicide attempts,” Dr. Katherine Hoops of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions wrote in an email. “Especially now, when we see growing numbers of young people dying by suicide, health professionals need effective and evidence-based strategies … to prevent these deaths, including allowing clinicians to directly petition for extreme risk protective orders.”
Firearm deaths, especially suicide, have increased steadily in Colorado, according to state data. In 2006, 358 people died by suicide with a gun. In 2021, the most recent year for which finalized mortality data is available, it was 701 people. Colorado has a higher rate of both firearm deaths and firearm suicides than the national average.
With the 2023 law, Colorado now has one of the most expansive policies around red-flag petitioners, according to research from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. Many states with ERPO laws limit petitioners to law enforcement and household or family members.
Leanne Rupp, the executive director of Colorado’s chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said the group welcomed the law as an extension of their toolkit to keep clients safe.
“We’ve heard far too many stories of clinicians who’ve lost clients to suicide by firearm due to the client not meeting an imminent risk threshold outlined by other laws that have existed for some time,” she said.
Involuntary psychiatric holds, for example, aren’t possible or appropriate in some cases, and an ERPO could be a better solution for the client’s health and safety.
At the same time, the new ability for licensed clinicians might not yet be widely known.
“Part of me speculates that it will take time for folks to learn about the expansion of the petitioner list and the process,” she said. “Some of this is that we just need more time.”