On March 4th at 0900 House Bill (HB) 1137 (Expungement of Red Flag Law Records) will receive a hearing in the Senate Corrections and Criminal Law Committee in Room 130 at the Indiana Statehouse.
Currently in Indiana, civil proceedings (under what is known as the “Laird Law,” being “dangerous” is a civil, not criminal matter) are always present on publicly-accessible records. Even if you are declared to have never been “a danger to yourself or others” by a judge, the accusation remains forever.
HB 1137 corrects a serious problem that has existed for 20 years. This bill passed unanimously out of committee in the House of Representatives, and passed the full House on a 91-0 vote. Even with this level of support, it is good to let our elected officials know we are here, and we are paying attention.
The link below goes to the Corrections and Criminal Law Committee webpage. In the top-right you’ll see “Find your Legislator.” You can find the contact information for your State Senator there, email/call/both to show support for this important legislation.
Something along these lines will work:
“House Bill 1137 Expungement of Red Flag Law Records corrects a long-standing problem for those falsely accused of being dangerous under the Laird Law. This bill passed unanimously out of the House, and deserves your support.”
Also from the link below, you can watch the live video from the hearing, or watch the archived video later. If a video icon is not on the committee page during the hearing, click on “Session” and then “Video”. Live-stream and Recordings are the choices.
I will be providing time points for the archived video (Guy Relford from the 2A Project at the 1 hour 25 minute mark; Nick Buggia from the NRA at 1 hour 17 minutes, etc.) once it’s available (usually 1-2 days.) Live-stream lets you see everything as it happens in committee. Archived allows you to fast-forward through the other bills to get to HB 1137.
The order in which the bills will be heard: they are in numerical order on the website (HB 1137 would be the 4th bill) but you never know the order until the hearing starts.
These hearings are open to the public. If you’re in the area of 200 West Washington Street in Indianapolis on Tuesday morning, stop on by.
