Senate Resurrects Bid to Abolish Gun Permit Requirement

(INDIANAPOLIS) – Senate Republicans will try again to get rid of Indiana’s gun permit requirement.

Senate leaders had said they’d revive the bill after a procedural hangup temporarily killed it, but left open whether it would be the same bill which passed the House last month. Bedford Senator Eric Koch, who’s now in charge of steering the bill through the process, says it will be. You could still seek a gun permit to make it easier to travel to the 28 states which still require one, but it wouldn’t be necessary in Indiana.

Current law requires a police review of permit applications to weed out people who have criminal records, mental health issues, or other disqualifiers. State Police say police have rejected nearly 11,000 applications over the last two years, more than 4,000 of them over prior convictions.

State Police Superintendent Doug Carter has blasted the bill as a vote against law enforcement. Police say the bill would replace a system that works with one that’ll prevent officers from identifying people who shouldn’t have guns.

Koch says Carter’s criticism is “duly noted,” but says Republicans and Democrats in both chambers will take up the original version.

A Senate committee voted last week to keep the permit requirement intact, but create a provisional permit while you’re awaiting approval. Chesterton Senator Rodney Pol says Senate Democrats could have supported that version. He says he doesn’t understand why Republicans would disregard both State Police warnings and nine hours of testimony which led to the provisional-permit compromise.