In this election year session of the Indiana General Assembly, Speaker Pat Bauer was willing to allow some good gun legislation to move forward. Democrat members of the House introduced bills paralleling bills introduced by Republican Senators and Representatives; therefore, the chances of gun owners' rights being protected improved considerably.
The two most prominent issues were the right to have a lawfully possessed firearm locked in a vehicle in a parking lot and the potential misuse by newspapers of the personal information contained in the application for a license to carry a handgun. Also, in the bills were provisions to prohibit the confiscation of lawfully possessed firearms during a locally declared emergency and extending the time during which a renewal of a license to carry could be applied for up to 365 days prior to the expiration of the current license.
Republican Senator Johnny Nugent introduced Senate Bill 25, and Democrat Representative Bob Cheatham introduced House Bill 1065. These were similar "parking lot" bills. Senator Nugent's bill passed the Senate by a vote of 41 to 9. Republican Senator Tom Wyss joined Democrat Senators Breaux, Broden, Lanane, Randolph, Rogers, Simpson, Tallian and Taylor in opposing the bill. It was sent to the House, where Representative Cheatham's 1065 became the primary bill. The House Natural Resources Committee almost caused the death of the bill by amending it at the request of spokesmen for Eli Lilly, Indiana Chamber of Commerce, REMC, and other big business interests to exempt businesses that filed security plans with the Homeland Security Department. The proponents of the bill provided the committee with information that showed that instead of just a few businesses as was suggested, this had the potential of exempting several hundred business and essentially making the bill meaningless. A compromise was finally reached which would exempt probably no more than six or seven types of entities.
The House bill was sent to the Senate where Senator Nugent became its sponsor and again obtained a 41 to 9 vote for the bill. The House then passed the final version 75 to 20.
When the bill was sent to Governor Mitch Daniels, the Governor said the bill involved "a black-letter Constitutional right." At the signing, Governor Daniels spoke of "the clear language of the 2nd Amendment of the U. S. Constitution and Article I Section 32 of the Indiana Constitution."
Republican Senator Greg Walker, Democrat Representative Peggy Welch, and Republican Representative Mike Murphy each introduced bills relating to access of the private, personal information of applicants for a license to carry a handgun. These bills were prompted by the widespread concern that some irresponsible newspapers would misuse this information to the detriment of law-abiding citizens.
The bills did provide for access to aggregate information with information identifying an individual deleted, for the purpose of journalistic or academic research. House Bill 1068 became the primary bill, and it passed almost unanimously in the Assembly. The House vote was 85 to 11, and the Senate voted 48 to 0 for the bill.
Several times requests were made of our members to contact their own legislators and members of committees. It was extremely helpful that those requests resulted in many calls and e-mails to legislators.
Although this was a pretty good year for law-abiding, gun owning Hoosiers, there are still individuals and groups out there who will continue to work to deprive Americans of their rights guaranteed under the Constitution -- especially the right to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and certainly the right to own and bear arms.