April Zeoli, an associate professor of public health and a director at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, presents to the 10th Annual Suicide Prevention Education Summit in Plymouth, Mich. Jan. 23, 2026. | Photo by Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance.
Michigan’s Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ERPO, law, which allows a person’s firearms to be temporarily removed from their possession in the case of a mental health crisis, was a point of focus for the 10th Annual Suicide Prevention Education Summit, hosted last week by Kevin’s Song, a Michigan charity aiming to grow awareness on the causes of suicide, as well as the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan.
For April Zeoli, an associate professor of public health and a director at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, the red flag law in Michigan is crucial for suicide prevention.
“What we know in research is that there are people who would be alive today if they hadn’t had access to a firearm when they were acutely suicidal,” Zeoli said in an opening keynote speech. “We also know that there are people who didn’t die because they didn’t have access to a firearm when they were acutely suicide, and extreme risk protection orders can help limit access to firearms.”
She noted that, of the 22 states that currently have some kind of red flag law on the books, many put those laws into place after a mass shooting, like that at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida or at Oxford High School in Michigan. Despite that, these laws are often used to prevent firearms being used in suicides as opposed to homicides or mass shootings.
“We’re seeing cases in our work that we wish somebody knew what the ERPO was and that they had utilized it effectively,” said Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller, emphasizing the importance of spreading information on how to effectively utilize these types of orders. “We have very few in our county.”
Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller and Jessica Roche, Managing Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, listen as Danielle Hagaman-Clark, the Criminal Bureau Chief of the Michigan Department of Attorney General speaks in a panel at the 10th Annual Suicide Prevention Education Summit in Plymouth, Mich. Jan. 23, 2026. | Photo by Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance.
ERPOs are broadly popular across the United States, Zeoli said, and while firearm owners tend to have slightly lower levels of support for these types of laws, they are still overwhelmingly supported across the board.
“79% of gun owners said this is a good law. 89% of non gun owners said this is a good law. You can look at NRA members, non-NRA members,” she said. “You can break this down however you want, race, gender. A large majority, and when I say large, I mean over 70% of each group, finds that they support these laws.”
In Lansing, however, House Republicans have taken up legislation to overturn the ERPO law, arguing that even a temporary restriction on a person’s access to firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment.
Fuller pushed back strongly against those concerns in a panel at the event.
“There is no part of this that is against anyone’s constitutional rights. We have seen proven success,” he said. “Law enforcement can’t just take your firearms.”
“For our friends who want to repeal ERPO, I point to Florida,” added Danielle Hagaman-Clark, the Criminal Bureau Chief of the Michigan Department of Attorney General. “Florida is one of the most conservative states in terms of ideology, and they’ve had ERPO on the books since 2018, and have had over 10 thousand ERPOs that have been done in their state, and so they clearly work. They clearly are bipartisan in nature.”
Even some elected officials who were initially opposed to the law have come around to it, Zeoli added.
“The sheriff in Livingston County went on the record before the ERPO law passed, and said that he wasn’t going to use these. He thought that they were unconstitutional, that the law shouldn’t be passed, and if it’s passed, he’s not going to use them,” she said. “He has used them.”
The role of firearms in suicide prevention was a key discussion topic at the event, even outside of discussions of the ERPO law. Cynthia Ewell-Foster, a clinical professor at the University of Michigan and Sarah Derwin, a health educator for the Marquette County Health Department, explained that especially in rural communities, firearms are involved in a high proportion of suicides — and for kids, that is often guns owned by their parents or grandparents.
“We don’t want to start having conversations about firearms after we know that the kid is at risk for suicide. Let’s back it up and have those conversations while everybody’s doing okay,” Ewell-Foster said. “Let’s talk about it like bike helmets and seat belts and something that’s good for everybody.”
The ERPO system is not perfect, Hagaman-Clark said, and there are improvements she would like to see made — especially in terms of helping resolve the underlying issues that caused the ERPO to be granted in the first place.
April Zeoli, an associate professor of public health and a director at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, presents to the 10th Annual Suicide Prevention Education Summit in Plymouth, Mich. Jan. 23, 2026. | Photo by Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance.
“We’re good, at this point, at taking guns, right? We’re a gun taking state,” she said. “But what are we doing to make sure that that person who’s had their guns taken is doing anything to get back on the path to wellness?”
But despite that, Hagaman-Clark said that she was “really encouraged” by the use of ERPOs in Michigan in the last two years that the law has been in place.
“We’ve seen other states that have had this law in place, and have far fewer numbers even than what Michigan has,” she said. “I’m encouraged, and I think that the numbers of ERPOs are only going to go up as the word gets spread and as people recognize that it is an opportunity or another way in which we can keep our loved ones safe.”
