City of Cranston leads Rhode Island in confiscating firearms under state’s red flag law 

In the almost four years since Rhode Island adopted a “red flag” law to try to avert tragedies, a single police department has confiscated 174 firearms from 42 individuals.

The law was signed to make it easier for police to remove guns from violence-prone individuals at “imminent” risk of killing themselves or others.

Cranston Police Capt. Carl Ricci said privacy laws prevent him from disclosing too many details, but one case involved “a worker” who threatened to harm his co-workers and then commit suicide. Another involved a man who texted a friend a photo of himself holding a Smith & Wesson pistol in his mouth. In a third case, a man sent a letter to the federal courthouse threatening harm to undisclosed Cranston police.

In all, Ricci said, the Cranston Police Department has won 42 of the 43 “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” it has requested from the state court system since the 2018 passage of the law aimed at removing guns from violence-prone individuals at “imminent” risk of killing themselves or others.

Statistics provided to The Providence Journal by the state court system this past week indicate the Cranston Police Department has been the most aggressive in the state in enforcing the “red flag” law.

Statistics for other counties are; Cumberland, 12 times; Johnston, 10 times; Providence, seven times; Coventry, six times; Woonsocket, four times; Warwick and Barrington, twice each.

The 2018 passage of the law, along with a ban on the kinds of “bump-stock” devices that enabled a lone gunman to kill 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas came in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre and high-school shootings that left a trail of death in Parkland, Florida, and Sante Fe, Texas.

The law initially attracted some criticism from the National Rifle Association (NRA) who said the law would provide minimal legal protections to those who were falsely accused.

Linda Finn, who was then president of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence, surmised that was a year that state lawmakers “felt public pressure to ‘do’ something … The red flag also responds to the narrative that it is the mentally ill that cause all the gun violence.”