AUGUSTA –– New data shows a decline in firearm-related deaths in Maine in 2024, while suicide consistently remaining the leading cause of gun deaths in Maine.

A 2026 report from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention includes new data from 2024, the most recent year data is available. 

According to the report, firearms-related deaths dropped in 2024, with 171 reported. That’s down from 195 deaths in 2023, but not as low as the 154 deaths recorded in 2020.

Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, said it’s difficult to look at data from 2023-2024 in isolation, since 2023 is the year a mass shooting took place in Lewiston, which killed 18 people.

“Our numbers for 2023 were of course higher than other years,” she said.

Laura Whitcomb, President of Gun Owners of Maine, said regardless of the events of 2023, the trend remains positive.

“The reality is that the numbers have gone down,” she said.

According to the Maine CDC data, suicide was consistently the leading cause of firearms-related deaths from 2020-2024. 

In 2024 the number of suicides, 157, was the same as in 2023. In 2024 suicides were responsible for more firearms-related deaths – 92% -- compared to the 81% in 2023. Compared to 2022, 2021 and 2020, 2024’s percentage was the highest.

Palmer said she was particularly bothered to see the report’s data on suicides despite the use of Maine’s yellow-flag law, which allows law enforcement to confiscate firearms from an individual diagnosed with a dangerous mental health disorder.

“Clearly, Maine has a really serious problem with gun suicide and the tools that we have had in place are not sufficient to meet the needs of our community and to prevent the gun suicides that are happening here,” she said.

Palmer was encouraged that in 2025, the state legislature passed the “red flag” law, which allows family members and/or law enforcement to directly petition a court to temporarily seize someone’s firearms if they seem to be a danger to themselves or others.

She also noted that the Maine legislature passed a law in 2024 establishing a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases, but now there is an effort to repeal both it and the red flag law.

Whitcomb said neither the waiting period nor removing firearms under the red flag law would alone prevent suicide.

“If somebody is going to take their own life, whether or not they have access to a firearm, they are going to do what they need to do,” she said.

Stopping suicide, Whitcomb said, requires addressing mental health crises that lead to suicide, something that the red flag law doesn’t do. 

“The red flag law goes in and takes people’s firearms,” she said. “It does absolutely nothing to help them.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text the suicide prevention hotline at 988.