By the Associated Press
1/17/2010
 Public access to the state database of people with permits to carry guns would be closed under a bill on its way to the floor of the Indiana House.
The bill was filed following complaints over newspaper stories that used information from the database to scrutinize how gun permits are issued, including one that found a permit wound up in the hands of a man who had pressed the barrel of a loaded handgun into the chest of a woman holding a baby.
The House Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.
"Individuals have a right to privacy," said Rep. Dave Cheatham, D-North Vernon, vice chairman of the panel.
The bill's author, Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington, said she been contacted by constituents who were alarmed that their privacy might be violated by such stories.
"It wasn't just people who owned guns," she said. "It was people who didn't own guns and said, 'I don't like the idea that somebody can know I don't have a permit, which may make them think that I don't have a gun and come and rob me,"' Welch said.
Welch said she still wants the media and academics to get generic information such as the number of permits issued per county, but not gun owners' names and addresses.
Neither the Indianapolis Star nor The Herald-Times of Bloomington, which used the database as a source for stories, published names and addresses of people who had concealed-weapon permits.
The Star reported several cases in which state police issued gun permits in Lake and Marion counties for people with violent or criminal histories despite objections from local police. They included the man who held the gun on a woman holding a baby, a man who was arrested for dealing crack cocaine and beating his girlfriend, and a man who held his wife captive for four days, threatening to shoot her and their children.
Hoosier State Press Association lobbyist Steve Key said more people would be endangered if the state gives permits to people who don't qualify.
Cheatham didn't want the media to have the names of license holders but said he "totally supported" the media putting pressure on officials if permits aren't correctly issued.
Dennis Ryerson, editor of The Star, said the information the proposed bill would conceal was vital to telling those types of stories.
"Without access to the names and addresses in the database, we would never have been able to show our readers how hundreds of bad guys were able to get concealed-weapons permits over the objections of local police jurisdictions," Ryerson said.
Welch said that according to a list provided by the National Rifle Association, 27 states have laws barring the release of gun-permit information.
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