Indiana Senate committee hears constitutional carry bill; chairwoman says no to amendments

(The Center Square) – The Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee heard several hours of testimony Wednesday on a constitutional carry bill, but Chairwoman Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, denied amendments to be offered and closed the hearing without a vote.

Senate Bill 14 was authored by Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, with Brown and Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, listed as co-authors.

Like the constitutional carry bill that just passed the House this week, House Bill 1077, it would allow citizens who are not prohibited from owning a handgun to carry one, loaded, concealed or open, on their person or in a bag or in a vehicle, without having to have a license. The handgun licensing system, which is administered by the Indiana State Police, would remain in place for those handgun owners wanting a license for reciprocity with other states or to prove they’re not prohibited from carrying a handgun.

SB 14 would only allow people 21 and over to carry a handgun, while HB 1077 applies to anyone 18 and over. In the Senate version, a person 18-20 found to be carrying a handgun would be committing a misdemeanor.

The Senate bill also contains an extensive list of those who would be considered “prohibited persons” and not allowed to carry a handgun, including a person who “has a record of being an alcohol abuser or a drug abuser.”

Hoosier Gun Rights and other gun rights groups worked with Tomes on amendments addressing these sections, but Tomes explained from the podium he was told no amendments would be allowed.

“I had three amendments to help improve this bill we worked on for quite some time with LSA [the Legislative Services Agency] to get this bill in a form that it should be in,” he said at the hearing, “but I was informed we’re not going to hear any amendments today.”

Giving testimony at the hearing was a man Newsweek magazine once called “the gun’s crowd’s guru,” economist, author and Second Amendment researcher John Lott, who came from Montana at the invitation of one of the senators to share his findings on what has happened in the other 21 states that have passed constitutional carry laws.

“One thing to note with these 21 states that have constitutional carry, not one of those states has even had a hearing, let alone any vote to try to rescind the constitutional carry laws that they have,” he told the committee. “And that’s despite the fact that you’ve had changes in political parties from the governor in the state or state legislature going from Democrat to Republican or reverse, and yet there still has not even been a single hearing on this.”

Ohio was the most recent state to pass constitutional carry, while Kentucky passed it in 2019.

“You know, if you do a news search on any of these states, including Kentucky, what you’ll find is that a few months after these laws get passed, it basically becomes a non-issue,” said Lott.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter testified in opposition to the bill, saying he didn’t care what has happened in other states and is only concerned with Indiana, and said passing constitutional carry “will add a layer of danger to what we do.”

In Indiana there are now 1.2 million people who have a handgun license, Carter said – amounting to about 20% of the state’s adult population.

Will Fite, legislative director of Hoosier Gun Rights, says his group doesn’t support the bill in its current form, as the language prohibiting handgun ownership by many categories of people is more restrictive than current law.

Fite said they would only support the bill with the amendments that were to be offered by Tomes.

“Everybody was on board to try to get it fixed,” he said.

He says Hoosier Gun Rights is still supporting the House bill and lobbying for it to be referred to the Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law. They’re not holding out hope for SB 14 and doubt Brown’s support for it.

“I think her entire intent today was to give a hearing so everyone would get off her back, and then ultimately kill her own constitutional carry bill,” he said.

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