Nicole Herling, Robert Card’s sister, rests her hand on her brother’s Army helmet while testifying to the commission investigating the Lewiston shootings in Augusta in May. She told the commission that the helmet failed to protect him from the concussive blasts he incurred while training cadets at West Point. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, unveiled a bill on Tuesday calling for a study of “repetitive low-level blast injuries” in the military and how they could affect brain health.

The Precision Health Research Act, co-sponsored by King and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, expands on an earlier legislative proposal focused on the effects of injuries from higher level blasts such as grenade explosions. That bill, called the Blast Overpressure Safety Act, would direct the Defense Department “to enact a range of measures to help mitigate and protect servicemembers from high-intensity blast overpressure.”

Research required by the new bill would examine the effects of other weapons on brain health, including gunfire, breaching charges used to clear doorways or other small passages, and other weapons. If approved, the bill would unlock $5 million in funding each year for 10 years to study veterans who were exposed to various forms of brain impacts, King’s office said.

“Traumatic brain injuries are a common, yet misunderstood and often undetectable, injury – and they can be traced to large blasts in small amounts or smaller blasts that add up over time, so we need to address them in all their forms,” King said in a written statement.

“We have a duty to expand our understanding of the impact these blasts have on mental health, and to protect the long-term health and well-being of our military community,” he said. “Here in Maine, we know all too well the horrible tragedies that can occur when (traumatic brain injuries are left untreated.”

Robert Card, who killed 18 people in Lewison in October 2023, was “exposed to thousands of low-level blasts” during years of Army Reserve grenade and weapons training in New York state, according to personnel records and a 2024 forensic analysis of Card’s brain tissue conducted by Boston University.

Brain injuries likely played a role in his declining mental health leading up to the tragedy, when he believed he was hearing voices of people mocking him and made vague threats of violence, according to the Boston University report.

Maine’s entire congressional delegation has pushed for more research and more precautions against brain injuries in the military in the wake of the tragedy.

The Lewiston mass shooting and the findings about Card’s brain injuries helped spur the Defense Department to move forward with new policies to protect military personnel from blast exposures, including baseline brain screenings for military service personnel as part of the entry process into military service and developing protocols to recognize symptoms of brain injuries.

The bill unveiled Tuesday would direct the Veterans Administration to “establish the effects of repetitive low-level blast injuries, where benchmarks must be reported to Congress, in order to develop further legislation for veterans who suffer from the effects of these repetitive blast exposures.”

“Recent studies have tied low-level blasts, which service members are exposed to during training and in combat, to high rates of brain and mental health conditions, as well as suicides,” Moran, the co-sponsor, said in a written statement Tuesday.

It was not clear how soon the bill could get a hearing or if it would be combined with other legislation.

The Blast Overpressure Safety Act was introduced earlier this year and would mandate brain testing for active military, establish training protocols to emphasize brain safety and change the design of weapons during the manufacturing process to lessen their impact during training.

King and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, co-sponsored the Senate version of the Blast Overpressure Safety Act, which was introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. Maine’s House members, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, and Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, co-sponsored the House version of the blast safety bill.