Schools across New York began the academic year with a new tool intended to prevent student suicides and violence: the ability to ask a court to remove a troubled person’s access to firearms. About a third of U.S. states have so-called “red flag” laws, which allow courts to temporarily seize guns from people believed to be a danger to themselves or others, but New York is the first to empower schools to petition a court themselves for such an order, rather than go through local law enforcement. In New York, school principals are now allowed to petition the court for an “extreme risk protection order” requiring the safe storage of firearms the youth might have access to, such as a parent’s gun.
