LANSING — A change in the way court systems are reporting Extreme Risk Protection Order data makes it difficult to assess what specific circumstances across the state are triggering the confiscation of firearms from individuals.
The Michigan State Police last week denied a public records request from The Detroit News seeking a detailed, anonymized database of the orders and the circumstances leading to their issuance. State police provided the 2024 data to The News last year but denied the new request for the 2025 information because of a change that requires court systems to report their cases directly into the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN), which is inaccessible to the public.
The Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, a two-year-old statute often referred to as a “red flag law,” allows police to confiscate the firearms of individuals believed to be a risk to themselves or others.
A new state-funded group meant to implement the law, faced with the same lack of centralized data, has been collecting case files from each of the state’s 83 counties, but some circuit courts have not been cooperative with the requests. And the process, even if all courts were responding, is burdensome.
The Michigan Firearm Law Implementation Program, funded through the 2024 budget, has yet to receive all of the case files from 2024 ERPOs, let alone those from 2025, said April Zeoli, director for the program.
“Right now, we don’t know what any of those extreme risk protection orders that were granted are for,” Zeoli said. “And knowing what they’re for helps us figure out what problems, what challenges people are facing that law enforcement or family members or health care providers are going to ERPO as a solution for.”
While Zeoli’s group is seeking the records to better carry out the law, others opposed to the statute said they are frustrated by the lack of access to records.
Public records requests to police departments are taking months to process, and a complete survey of case files in Michigan courts is not feasible, said Tom Lambert, legislative director for Michigan Open Carry and an attorney working on some cases for individuals who have had their firearms seized.
“Regardless of anyone’s stance on whether this process should be in place, we should know how it works,” Lambert said. “We should see: Is this working? Is it not working? Are there problems that need to be fixed?”
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, the Royal Oak Democrat who sponsored the red flag law, expressed confidence that the law was working when The News asked her about the lack of detailed, centralized data on cases.
“Reporting on this program needs to be just as strong,” McMorrow said. “SCAO publishes yearly reports, and I trust every agency involved in implementation will work to do the same.”
The State Court Administrative Office is required annually to give a brief overview of the frequency of requests and orders. But even that report lacks detail on what prompted the confiscation or statistics on whether the request stemmed from law enforcement, a family member or a medical professional.
Annual report provides few details of gun confiscation cases
The Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, commonly referred to as the red flag law, took effect Feb. 13, 2024, and allows police officers, some medical professionals and family members to petition a judge to confiscate the firearms of individuals believed to be a risk to themselves or others.
The most recent annual report on the frequency of use of the red flag law indicates 514 petitions were filed under the state’s red flag law in 2025, a roughly 31% increase from the 10 months the act was in place in 2024.
Of those 514 requests, 407 were granted, 93 were dismissed or denied by a judge and 10 were dismissed or withdrawn by a petitioner. The results of the other four cases were not available.
The report has some information on the race, gender and age range of the individuals requesting and those subject to an extreme risk protection order, but the data is very incomplete. For example, the race of 228 people subject to an ERPO was “unknown,” the gender of 195 ERPO recipients was “unknown” and the age of 193 was marked as “unknown.”
The report provides little other information outside the disposition of the case, which was why The News last year requested additional, centralized information on the cases from state police.
The state police provided an anonymized database showing the type of petitioner, a brief summary of the events prompting the request and the status of the order.
That information, which Michigan State Police argues is shielded in the LEIN system this year, provided data showing ERPOs had been issued on several minors, including a six-year-old, and that the Detroit police department had used ERPOs on four of its officers. This year, with more than 500 ERPOs requested in 2025, there is no easy way to get a comprehensive view of why those orders were requested.
Last year, when The News requested the 2024 data, the information was still being transferred into LEIN by state police and thus was considered a public record, said Michigan State Police First Lt. Mike Shaw. But that changed four months after The News reported on the MSP database.
“On June 23, 2025, local courts began putting the information directly into LEIN and it was no longer kept outside of LEIN,” Shaw said, while explaining why The News request was denied last week.
UM implementation group trying to collect more red flag data
The Michigan Firearm Law Implementation Program (M-FLIP), which falls under the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, was funded through a $5.5 million grant contained in the fiscal year 2025 state budget to help with carrying out several new gun laws, including the red flag law and the safe storage act.
The program officially launched last month, but Zeoli and others at UM have been gathering data on ERPO use in Michigan and elsewhere for much longer. While the state court data already released is helpful, she said, more detailed case information will help the group assess a variety of angles related to the law.
For example, information on the petitioners may show a need to boost education on the law among domestic abuse prevention groups or to develop protocols among health care providers who are allowed to file petitions, Zeoli said. More details can help researchers to understand how often the orders are being used for suicide risks compared with risks involving violence against others. If petitions from family members, specifically, are repeatedly denied, the state could examine whether the petition process for lay people should be adjusted.
That more detailed information is important to the state’s study of the law’s implementation, Zeoli said. But because Michigan’s court system is not centralized, it would be “wildly expensive” for the state to assemble the case files in a central location, she acknowledged — a reality that prompted the group to collect case files from each courthouse.
“We don’t have all the records from 2024 yet,” Zeoli said. “We are working on 2025 for the counties that have cooperated with us previously. We are still working out how to get some of the counties that simply said, ‘You can’t have them,’ or they have a process that we simply can’t meet the requirements of. It’s a feasibility issue.”
Data collection challenges aside, Zeoli said the red flag program appears to be rolling out in Michigan as expected, with police departments making up the majority of petitioners in the first years as the wider public learns about the program.
“Removing firearms, preventing access to firearms, is something that we know from research works to save lives,” Zeoli said. “And this is about making sure people at high risk of harming themselves or others in the near future, making sure they don’t have a firearm to do that with.”
Opposition groups frustrated by lack of centralized data
Attorneys opposed to the legislation have shared with each other anecdotal details regarding the red flag cases they’re currently handling, said Steve Dulan, a member of the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners. But those “horror stories,” as Dulan described them, provide an incomplete picture of the law’s rollout across the state.
The lack of centralized, detailed data on the cases presents a challenge as do court efforts to shield some cases involving minors or involving individuals whose attorneys are moving to have their cases sealed.
“I’m not sure any of us are ever going to get the whole picture,” Dulan said.
Lambert, the attorney with Michigan Open Carry, said he’s had months-long waits and unexplained redactions after seeking records on ex parte ERPO petitions requested by some Metro Detroit police departments.
The records related to the ex parte requests, which seek a gun confiscation order without first having a court hearing, are especially important because they’ll show what sort of evidence is triggering those emergency orders, Lambert said. Of the 514 orders requested in 2025, 459 were requested ex parte, according to the state report.
“We have requested copies from police departments, and we have had trouble even there,” Lambert said.
eleblanc@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Detailed data on Michigan’s red flag law gun seizure cases gets sparse
Reporting by Beth LeBlanc, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
