By NRA-ILA
FAIRFAX, Va.– The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) applauds Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb for signing into law a comprehensive gun rights bill that will make it easier for law-abiding Hoosiers to defend themselves. Gov. Holcomb signed the bill into law on the stage of the NRA-ILA’s Leadership Forum at the Indiana Convention Center – Lucas Oil Stadium.
Lawmakers amended HB 1284, introduced by Rep. Jim Lucas, to include important self-defense protection from HB 1643, introduced by Rep. Ben Smaltz.
The new law expands self-defense options in the following ways:
- eliminates state fees for a new five-year state License to Carry a Handgun (LTCH);
- allows law-abiding gun owners greater ability to carry for self-protection in churches;
- allows gun owners to register to vote when they apply for a LTCH.
“Under this new law, honest, hard-working gun owners will no longer be forced to pay $125 to exercise a fundamental right that ought to be free,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA executive director. “This law ends this abuse and ensures that the most vulnerable gun owners are able to protect themselves without worrying about the cost of a license.”
Additionally, the new law provides greater protection to gun owners. Previously, an undue burden was on the defendant in exercising the right to self-defense. Under the new law, that burden is shifted. In addition, a person who acts in self-defense and is later forced to defend themselves a second time in court can be reimbursed for the legal fees associated with their defense.
“On behalf of our more than 5 million members, I want to thank Gov. Holcomb for standing up for the rights of honest, hard-working gun owners,” added Cox. “I also want to thank Reps. Jim Lucas and Ben Smaltz for their tireless efforts promoting legislation that improves the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves and their families.”
This article originally appeared at nraila.org and is reprinted here with permission.
https://youtu.be/7sNiklO506A
Funny you should post that here. Indiana also passed HB 1651, which improves due process protections in Indiana’s long-standing “red flag” law, Laird’s Law.
Uh, you left out the single, biggest part of HB 1284: the complete civil immunity for justified use of force in self-defense.
EDIT: well, okay, let’s say the press release buried the lede.
As for the church carry: it isn’t (and wasn’t) unlawful to carry in church. It is, however, unlawful to carry in schools. Lots of churches use buildings that are otherwise designated as schools, which prevented lawful carry by churchgoers, even when there was no school taking place.
And to expand on the LTCH: Indiana currently has a lifetime LTCH and a 4-year renewable LTCH. The 5-year LTCH will replace the existing 4-year LTCH, will be “enhanced”/Brady-compliant (i.e. can be used in lieu of NICS checks), and will have no fees. (The lifetime LTCH, with fees, will remain.)
Chip Bennett,
So, does this new law mean that you can carry concealed handguns to church services in schools at all times? Or does it mean you can carry concealed when school is not in session? Or did it not change anything and you still cannot carry concealed at church services in schools?
Statutory language:
A person who:
(A) may legally possess a firearm; and
(B) possesses a firearm on school property in connection
with or while:
(i) attending a worship service or religious ceremony
conducted at a house of worship located on the school
property; or
(ii) carrying out the person’s official duties at a house of
worship located on the school property, if the person is
employed by or a volunteer at the house of worship.
This subdivision does not affect the right of a property owner
to prohibit, in whole or in part, the possession of a firearm on
a property where a school or house of worship is located.
Thank you Chip. That looks pretty decent.
“Hello, ‘Debbie’ here. Would you like to donate 125$ to the NRA today, so Wayne LaPierre can continue to lead us to victory?!”
Seriously though, good on the NRA for recognizing real, meaningful progress. They’re generally good on the carry stuff (care to guess why?) but it’d be nice if they would be as diligent in all areas of gun rights…and do so more fuel-efficiently, so to speak.
“…allows law-abiding gun owners greater ability to carry for self-protection in churches…”
This one has always been a odd one to me. On the one hand Liberals argue for “separation of Church and State” but on the other hand they want the State to tell you what you can and cannot possess while in a Church.
It’s almost as if they pick whatever set of rules is convenient for them to tell everyone else what to do under threat of legal force… nah, that can’t be right.
Church carry is and was not unlawful in Indiana prior to HB 1284. The protections in this bill are for churches that take place on properties designated as schools, where carry was, prior to HB 1284, otherwise prohibited.
I’m not saying it was unlawful, merely commenting on the fact that it’s even mentioned by the legislature which is just odd to me.
If a Church wants to allow or even ban guns, what business is that of anyone outside that congregation? If no actual crimes that harm someone are done on Church grounds then what business does the government have concerning itself with anything that goes on on Church grounds outside the scope of actual criminal activity that has a victim?
Derp,
Point being that if the Church is inside a school/on school grounds or the Church has a school within it’s grounds, then that is still outside the authority of the government IMHO unless a crime occurs that creates an actual victim. A religiously based school can mandate Mass or Sunday Service for it’s members, don’t like it? Go public.
A public school allows a Church service on it’s grounds? Well, then either the Church rules apply while that area is a Church or the Church shouldn’t be there at all.
I have strong disagreements with the idea that government can prohibit my constitutional rights while I am in a school, never mind a church.
The same guys that are anti-gun but have personal guns stashed away for that “rainy day”. Chicago (anti-gun) alderman arrested by the feds had 20+ guns in his city office. (few months ago)
What if it’s a private school? Still no guns allowed? I thought it was just public/government buildings. I may be wrong……
What they mean is that they don’t want the church, or any form of concrete, absolute moral values in gov’t. ‘Etched in stone’ moral values (quite literally in the case of the 10 Commandments) fly in direct opposition to the kind of gov’t liberals crave.
People in the Chicago area used to make fun of Indiana “a bunch of hicks”. Now they’re buying houses in NW Indiana and seeing their property tax bill drop by more than half. The commute is shorter than from the Illinois suburbs. Of course, they still vote the same Chicago way.
As a lifetime Indiana CCW permit holder I say just go ahead and go full Constitutional Carry. It sounds like we’re halfway there and I, for one, won’t feel the least upset or ‘ripped off’ having had to pay for mine and my wife’s.
If you’re from Indiana, you don’t have a CCW. You have an LTCH. Method of carry is not specified.
But, yes: HB 1284 – by getting rid of 5-year LTCH fees – will go a long way toward eventual passage of constitutional carry. The funding provided by the LTCH fees are the primary argument that keeps the police unions from supporting constitutional carry.
True, I tend to use CCW, wrong or not, as a generic term to cover license to carry.
Chip,
Oh, now that is an interesting strategy: first eliminate the “poll tax” (a tax to exercise a Constitutionally enumerated right) on licenses to carry and the state police agencies, who no longer get any compensation for their licensing activity, will then support constitutional carry simply to decrease the expense of the licensing activity which no longer generates any revenue for them.
I like it.
Nope, the fact is that law KILLED constitutional carry.
The most pro gun person will go on about how licensed carriers are the most law abiding group, and then gripe about how the Civil Right is being taxed.
Everyone needs to have a pedestal to stand on.
Binder,
With all due respect, you don’t know shit about the ongoing, five-year effort to get constitutional carry passed in Indiana. Let me know when you’ve listened to the arguments on the floor of the statehouse, the committee meetings, the summer studies, etc, and when you’ve talked to state representatives, senators, and committee chairmen.
This (especially coupled with the Pinner decision) is the single, greatest step toward constitutional carry in the course of those five years. If you were here, you’d know why.
Yeah Indiana Red Flag confiscation is not pro-gun they leave out!
How come after many years of being pushed Constitutional Carry is not in Indiana if they are so pro gun like the other 16 states!??
Definitely not the top priority for the mostly i got my “W BURL Biden Special”…. Fudd State!
A lifetime permit should have a freedom rebate. They can NICS ck u anytime since its a illegal database!
The Second Amendment and Shall Not Be Infringed is clearly AGAINST asking the Goobermint Thugs FOR PERMISSION!
You should go back to Kentucky.
(No offense, Chris T in KY. I actually like Kentucky.)
As a little background, a big impetus behind the immunity from the civil liability portion of the bill (now law) comes from the Kystie Jaehne case.
The relatively short version of that case is, in Feb 2017, Ms. Jaehne saw a police officer struggling with a perp (one Justin Holland) on the ground. The officer was losing the fight and the perp was apparently about to get control of the officer’s firearm. Jaehne shot the perp, who died a short time later.
Despite being a legally justified shoot, and despite the fact that the perp’s toxicology report showed he was out of his gourd with the presence of meth and bunch of other drugs in his system, Ms. Jaehne was sued by the perp’s family for “excessive and unjustified use of force.”
Jaehne was represented by a gun rights attorney named Guy Relford (a seriously good egg, btw), who also testified in support of the bill that is now law. The legal suit has been resolved, IIRC, though I’m not sure of the final outcome (settlement or dismissal, etc.)
What’s interesting, in the most disgusting sense of the word, is the behavior of several Indiana state legislators acted in regards to this bill. A Democratic state senator named Jean Breaux made some bizarre statement about the bill redefining the standards under which deadly force could be used (it does no such thing). Another Democratic state senator (whose name escapes me at the moment) made some disparaging comments as to whether Jaehne’s situation rose to the threshold of what the bill intended, or something along those lines.
BTW, admins. What’s up with the “You have been blocked!” filter? Literally the only thing I changed from my original post to the one that made it through was to leave out a complete list of the controlled substances in the perp’s system (and what a list it was!). This has never happened to me before this week, and now it’s happened twice.
Is this an auto-filter thing, or am I on some sort of double-secret probation? Whatever it is, I didn’t do it! 🙂
It’s a spam filter.
Well it works too much like a liver, if it’s filtering lists of illicit drugs!
I think it’s trying to block that tool that keeps copy-pasting that sovereign-citizen diatribe about the ATFs jurisdiction or whatever; it has a lot of bullet points & lists, too
It filters a bunch of things that I’ve found so far. If you use html in the “wrong way” it blocks that because it’s the same syntax as a script in certain languages. Too long, a word that repeats, too many html objects etc.
As my wife says “This is why we can’t have nice things”.
The filter has gotten more aggressive.
As a rule of thumb, anything bayond a short, plain-text bleating of “first” risks being filtered.
The censor-bot does tell you you can contact the site overlords, and provides a huge incomprehensible ID string to reference. So, yeah, you can follow up. But they’re gonna make it hard.
Any resemblance to stealth-prohibition of guns through admin encumberance is purely … what they do when they do not want to admit what they are doing.
Split up for “spam” filter avoidance…
If the mindset is “Keep those bothersome people in our comments in line.” you do spam protection one way. You also become Ama-Twit-Face-Gram-Oogle. Those proles are the product, not the customers.
If the mindset is “Host a salon for this particular kind of cool kids.” well, you “spam” filter differently. Myself, I’ll kick in to cover venue costs if it’s somewhere worth being. And have. May again.
Meanwhile, off the top of my head there are 6 variations on after-detection behavior if the goal is to support the conversation n unpaid content in the comments. If the goal is “editorial voice” and “you, shut up”, well, just follow Huffpo’s lead. Economically, too.
“The censor-bot does tell you you can contact the site overlords, and provides a huge incomprehensible ID string to reference. So, yeah, you can follow up. But they’re gonna make it hard.”
Don’t bother following up as I did TWICE by emailing [email protected]. They don’t respond so I presume that they don’t give a damn. When RF owned the site, he or someone else always responded. Sometimes, RF called me back on the telephone. Times certainly have changed at TTAG.
Thank you Sean, I was trying to think of that case.
Well great another reason to move to Indiana. I already spend most of my dough there.But I thought lifetime carry was a mere $175? BTW LOTS of guns carried at Hammond,IN Baptist church. Literally awash with weapons and a few guys with NRA & 2A shirts.
The Constitution says it’s free and always will be.
We moved to Hammond from Chicago last September and couldn’t be happier.
NRA Applauds gun rights bill…offers no help while the battle was raging but takes credit and asks for donations to replenish their coffers after all of their non-efforts….
Actually, NRA ILA was at the statehouse, championing this bill. No other gun rights organization was.
Well of course they were there they haven’t missed a chance to put infringements on gun owners since 1934.
Yeah, good news and all that.
Still not giving one more penny to NRA so long as Wayne La Pierre and other fellow corrupt BoD members are still there.
Hope the NY AG finds something criminal. Rather have a de-loused NRA to rebuild than what we have now!
Why are those fools thanking him for infringements?
Constitutional carry is the only legal Constitutional law and has been since December 1791.
Yep. Take what’s mine and then lend me scraps from my own stuff. Thank you massa!
“This article originally appeared at nraila.org and is reprinted here with permission.”
C’mon TTAG. You re-release an article full of the NRA patting itself on the back for actions of the governor of Indiana.
They “applaud.” They “recognize.” But where in this article does it say what the NRA actually did, in a state currently politically inclined to enact pro-2A measures with or without the NRA’s help.
I applaud and recognize Gov Holcomb’s actions as well. Anyone care to send me their donations and dues? I’ll write really nice press releases about the work of other people and enjoy the cash just as much — if not more — as LaPierre and his conmen cronies.
Indiana still has a LOT of restrictions on Concealed Carry and if you don’t know all of them you can find yourself in trouble. Im from KY and have had run ins with IN Sheriffs when pulled over for a BS traffic stop. I had to take them to court to get my CC Weapon back because they refused to file any paper work for 6 months. They tried to keep my Pistol to resell on a technicality. Finally the judge after three no shows in court by the deputies rescinded the incident and ordered them to turn my weapon over to me. That cost me almost a thousand dollars in legal fees and wasted time off from work each court appearance.