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Indiana's Constitutional Carry law hasn't killed off concealed carry licenses

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Even in states that don’t require a permit or a license in order for legal gun owners to lawfully carry a concealed firearm, there are going to be some folks who find the need to acquire a government permission slip. They might want to carry in other states that recognize their home state’s license, or (in some states) carry in places that are off-limits to those carrying under Constitutional Carry provisions but are open to those with an actual license.

That being said, I’ll confess to being surprised at just how many people have applied for a new license since Indiana’s permitless carry law took effect on July 1st. According to the Indiana State Police, while new permit applications are down, they’re still more common than you might expect.

One month later, Indiana State Police Captain Ron Galaviz said Hoosiers are still applying.

“We knew there would be a decline, but what this still tells us is there are people out there still trusting that process and going through it,” Galaviz said.

Between Jan. 1 and June 30, Indiana State Police approved close to 35,000 firearm permit applications, Galaviz said.

That number averages out to about 5,800 permit applications per month. In July, however, that number dropped to 2,833 approved applications.

Galaviz said despite the drop in permit applications, the process to apply has not changed. Hoosiers can start the application process online for free.

The importance of practicing responsible gun ownership has also not changed, according to Galaviz.

“You are going out and buying a machine. Understand how it works, how to clean it, how to maintain it,” Galaviz said. “Do all those things, but most of all, make sure you properly and safely store it, so we are keeping it out of the hands of people that should not have them, especially children.”

I think the fact that Indiana doesn’t charge a fee for their concealed carry license has probably helped keep the number of applicants as high as it is. Applicants are still required to pay for fingerprints, but that’s the only real fee connected to the license since the state legislature approved legislation in 2021 removing the $125 licensing fee; a move that gun control groups decried even while proclaiming themselves fans of the Second Amendment.

“We are often seen as the enemy and we are not the enemy,” said Heather Hibert, Moms Demand Action volunteer. “We are pro-second amendment. We are a group that includes veterans and gun owners. We simply just want to make sure people are responsible with their firearms and that they don’t get into the hands of someone who shouldn’t have them.”

… Within the first week, Indiana State Police told WANE 15 that more than 25,000 people had signed up for the license. With the recent flood of Hoosiers applying for free five-year handgun licenses, Hibert says she is concerned.

“When the licensing takes too long it’s flooded the system, we run the risk of buying a firearm with someone else without carrying a license,” Hibert said. “When that happens we run into the risk of they are buying from a seller not doing a background check. We run the risk of them transferring ownership of a gun to someone who shouldn’t have it.”

As my colleague Tom Knighton pointed out at the time, Hibert’s fears were unfounded because the state doesn’t require a permit to purchase a firearm beforehand, and private person-to-person sales don’t require a background check under state or federal law.

Of course, her real issue had nothing to do with potential delays in background checks and everything to do with the surge in interest for concealed carry licenses after those governmental fees disappeared. Hibert has continued her general opposition to concealed carry in the months since, and was even handcuffed and briefly detained earlier this year after she and another activist were trying to protest after-hours outside of the governor’s office in the state capitol building.

While she’s complaining, more Hoosiers than ever before are exercising their right to bear arms in self-defense, with and without a government permission slip. We’ll see if the number of concealed carry applications declines further as more residents become aware of the permitless carry law, but even if that’s the case I expect the number of armed citizens to continue to grow… something that real pro-Second Amendment activists will be cheering on.

Georgians defend constitutional carry law

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Earlier this year, the state of Georgia became a constitutional carry state. It means I, a lifelong Georgian, no longer have to have a permit to carry my firearm outside of my house.

It was a huge step forward as a state, to be sure.

Now, Georgia Public Broadcasting is airing a show that will pit both sides of the gun debate against one another. In the process, they’re giving the Second Amendment side an opportunity to defend the state’s gun laws.

The new show on GPB-TV, Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome, takes viewers to a gun rights group’s meeting as part of the program’s exploration of Georgia’s new law which allows carrying concealed handguns in public without a license.

Douglas Jefferson equates Georgia’s previous gun laws, on the books for centuries, to restrictions on Black people regarding voting under Jim Crow laws.

“Itlooks very much like a poll tax,” Jefferson said. “You have to pay money to the government to get the permission to do something that is already written into the Constitution that says you as a citizen should be able to do.”

Jefferson’s not alone. He belongs to the fast-growing National African American Gun Association (NAAGA), founded in Georgia in 2015, that now has more than 45,000 members in 40 states.

Advocates of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms, including NAAGA members, praise the law they call “constitutional carry” because it removes the $75 fee Georgians paid to get a gun permit.

“This wasn’t really a sea change,” said John Monroe, Vice President and General Counsel for GA2A, formerly GeorgiaCarry.org. “Now that the law has passed, law-abiding citizens can carry without a license, and criminals still can’t carry without a license because they’re prohibited under the new law as well.”

Of course, there’s another side to the debate, including people who claim to be gun owners but just can’t imagine the need for a gun outside of the home.

I suspect some of the survivors of the Greenwood Park Mall shooting are going to find that claim less than believable.

Still, the defense of the state’s constitutional carry law is vital. After all, polling suggests that it’s not particularly popular, which I found surprising. If that’s true, Second Amendment advocates need to step up and defend the law, making a variety of valid arguments as to why this is a good thing for people here in the state.

In other words, we have to play defense in order to play offense.

However, it should be noted that GPB’s write-up here is clearly anti-gun. After all, when a Second Amendment supporter argues that mass shootings tend to happen in gun-free zones, the final paragraph is one of the opponents pointing out that the shooting in Atlanta last year wasn’t in such a gun-free zone.

Missing is any counter to that “argument,” nor the fact that this same person seems to think there’s no good reason to carry a gun outside of the home–yet that very same shooting would have been different had a law-abiding citizen been there with their own firearm and could have saved lives.

Yet that’s about what we should expect from so-called public television.

Regardless, it’s good to see the pro-gun side get an opportunity to defend a much-needed law like constitutional carry.

As permitless carry takes effect in Indiana, gun control activists long for “compromise”

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As of today, Hoosiers who can legally own a gun can also lawfully carry it without the need for a government-issued permission slip, and as you can imagine, the handful of gun control activists in the state aren’t happy about it. Instead, they’re longing for “compromise” when it comes to Indiana gun laws, which seems more like wishful thinking than a political strategy.

It’s true that Indiana Senator Todd Young was one of 15 Republicans to vote for the gun deal cobbled together by a bipartisan group of senators in response to the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, but Young is very much the exception and not the rule when it comes to matters that implicate the right to keep and bear arms. Why would Indiana Republicans water down the Second Amendment protections that they’ve recently put in place, especially after the Supreme Court has come made it abundantly clear that our right to bear arms in self-defense is a fundamental right?

On the state level, Democrats have asked to discuss gun laws during the upcoming special session. But GOP leadership has said it wants to focus on inflation relief and restricting abortion access.

Despite the reluctance to pursue gun reform in recent years, Molly Barwick, Bloomington representative for Moms Demand Action on Gun Violence, says she is holding out hope for some sort of compromise, as legislators have shown a willingness to act on gun safety in the past – Indiana was the second state in the U.S. to implement a red flag law.

“There is still work we can do in Indiana,” she said. “The more I talk to people, gun owners and non-gun owners, about these issues, we all want to work to prevent gun violence.”

It’s nice of Barwick to acknowledge that, but she also has to understand that for many gun owners, preventing “gun violence” doesn’t involve reducing access to our Second Amendment rights or targeting law-abiding gun owners instead of the perpetrators of violent crime. There are lots of things that we can do that are targeted, effective, and constitutional, but gun control activists like her are constantly pushing for a solution that depends on infringing on the rights of legal gun owners, and they’re not going to find many gun owners in Indiana willing to compromise their rights for the empty promise of increased safety.

… Barwick and other advocates say they’ll continue to push for gun reform in future sessions, though they aren’t expecting movement anytime soon. But they’ve been pleased to see many people at recent gun protests have been young.

“They’re understanding that you need to get out and you need to talk to your lawmakers, you need to campaign and work to elect officials,” Barwick said. “I am encouraged by that. They understand that at an earlier age than I did.”

Yeah, gun control activists love to see young people involved in the political process almost as much as they hate to see them embrace their right to keep and bear arms. Unfortunately for Barwick and her fellow gun control activists, most of what they’re demanding is not only unpopular among Indiana lawmakers, but unconstitutional as well.

My advice? Drop the demands for more restrictions on law-abiding citizens. Instead of searching for a “compromise” that isn’t likely to come, collaborate with gun owners and Second Amendment advocates on strategies to reduce violent crime that focus on violent offenders instead. Republicans and Democrats in Virginia recently came together to secure millions of dollars in grant money for cities that adopt Project Ceasefire; a proven program that offers young gang members the opportunity to turn their life around or, failing that, delivers serious consequences by referring any future criminal case to federal court whenever possible. This effort has reduced homicide rates by more than 50% in cities that have successfully adopted the program, and if gun control activists are looking for a truly “commonsense reform” that can get the backing of even conservative gun owners, Project Ceasefire would be a good place to start.

PA Republicans gut gun control bill and replace it with Constitutional Carry language

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The odds of a Democratic-sponsored gun control legislation getting enacted by the Republican-controlled legislature in Pennsylvania were never good to begin with, but lawmakers took the extra step on Tuesday of stripping a bill of language that would have raised the age to purchase a modern sporting rifle from 18 to 21 and replacing it with Constitutional Carry language instead.

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee made the swap over the objections of Democratic sponsor Rep. Peter Schweyer, who said he still wants to see the bill brought forward for a vote on the House floor.

“I don’t want to give them an opportunity to hide behind a committee vote. I want them to have to justify why they did this in public,” he said.

Judiciary Committee Chairperson Rob Kauffman, R-Franklin, declined to speak with reporters after the vote.

Democratic members of the committee vocally opposed the amendment, calling it an abdication of the Legislature’s responsibility.

“Instead of going in one direction to provide appropriate regulation of the collective right to buy arms, we are going to buy into the myth of the individual inviolate right to bear arms,” said Rep. Joseph Hohenstein, D-Philadelphia.

“If we don’t regulate this right to bear arms and we say instead there is an unfettered individual right we will effectively have gone 150 years back into the wild west,” Hohenstein said.

Sorry Joe, but you lost me at “collective right”. What Hohenstein wants, of course, is to tell young adults that not only can they not purchase the most common firearm for self-defense (a handgun), they’re no longer allowed to purchase the most commonly-sold rifle in the country as well.

If we want to have a national conversation about raising the age of adulthood to 21, fine (though I think that would only exacerbate the problem of extended adolescence). But when Democrats are calling for both lowering the voting age to 16 and raising the age to exercise your Second Amendment rights to 21, I honestly find it hard to take either argument seriously, especially when the anti-gun side makes it clear they don’t want to stop with barring those under the age of 21 from purchasing a semi-automatic rifle.

“We’re talking about guns that kill lots of people all at once and we don’t need those in our society writ large and we certainly don’t need them in the hands of teenagers who lack impulse control,” he said. “We are failing to do our jobs and we are actually doing harm if we don’t pass this.”

A serious question for Hohenstein and other gun control advocates; if young adults are so lacking in impulse control, why isn’t he demanding a complete ban on under-21s possessing any firearm? How about everyone younger than 25? And why stop with firearms? Why haven’t we (or rather, they) called for raising the age to operate a smart phone or to post on social media to 21 as well? Imagine the damage that could be done to sex traffickers and their networks if we kept kids and young adults off of platforms like Facebook.

Of course there would be First Amendment concerns, but why should those bother Hohenstein any more than Second Amendment considerations factor into his calls for more gun control? If it protects just one child, isn’t it worth curtailing the rights of every young adult in the state of Pennsylvania?

As for the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who substituted gun control language with the text of a stalled Constitutional Carry bill instead, while I appreciate the sentiment, the bill itself isn’t about to become law. Constitutional Carry has already been approved by the state legislature, and it’s been vetoed by Gov. Tom Wolf. They can pass the bill again (and very well might if Schweyer succeeds in bringing the bill to the floor), but as long as the governor has a “D” after his name, the Keystone State is going to keep a license to carry requirement in place.

Now that both parties have reminded us of their respective positions on the right to keep and bear arms, maybe the two sides can start to talk about ways to address violent crime that don’t involve criminalizing a constitutional right. I’ve been a huge proponent of programs like Project Ceasefire, and I’m pleased that Republicans and Democrats in my state of Virginia were finally able to agree on millions of dollars in the latest budget to fund grants for a proven program that can change lives for the better and can reduce homicide rates by more than 50% when successfully implemented. There’s no reason why Pennsylvania lawmakers couldn’t find the same accord, except for Democrats insisting that the only way to improve public safety is by restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

Abrams says we can't “punish” our way to safety, but pledges to create new crimes out of the right to carry

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It’s not like Stacey Abrams was ever going to be the pro-2A candidate in the Georgia governor’s race, but the Democrat is proposing some major restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms as part of her gubernatorial campaign.

According to Axios, which was the first to report on Abrams anti-gun agenda, the candidate says if elected, she’ll work to roll back or repeal several pro-gun measures that have been put in place in the state over the past few years, starting with the permitless carry law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp back in April.

Abrams said she would push for “the obvious and the common-sense gun safety rules that do not infringe upon anyone’s ability to carry.”

  • She called the federal gun control compromise “an important step” but one that cannot fully address state-level challenges.
  • Abrams plans to institute a state red flag law and to close certain loopholes like background checks for gun show sales and domestic violence perpetrators.

Yes, but: She is also proposing a massive political lift: to roll back some of the biggest expansions of gun access that Georgia Republicans have passed recently.

  • That would include the permitless carry law Kemp signed this year, the 2017 “campus carry” law, which allows concealed carry on college campuses, and a 2014 measure that allowed Georgians to carry weapons in places including churches, schools and bars. (Opponents dubbed it “guns everywhere.”)

So Abrams says she won’t do anything to “infringe” on the right to carry, yet she plans on undoing most of the laws that protect Georgians’ right to carry a firearm in self-defense. Those two statements don’t seem too compatible to me, and I’m guessing that most Georgia voters aren’t going to buy her rhetoric either. Still, with Kemp enjoying a pretty steady lead of around five points over Abrams, she’s gotta do something to try to fire up her base, and with gun control the top issue for many Democrats at the moment, going after the right to carry may seem like a logical starting point. And unlike her counterpart in the Texas governor’s race, Abrams isn’t calling for a ban on AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles in Georgia, telling Axios it’s not “tenable”.

Abrams is tying her public safety agenda to efforts to combat causes of violence and address recidivism, including reestablishing a criminal justice reform task force created by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, which Kemp ended. It received national recognition for cutting prison spending, diverting nonviolent offenders and addressing underlying issues in the criminal justice system like substance abuse and mental illness.

  • Abrams worked with Deal on the commission as Democratic House leader and said she intends to “pick up his legacy.”
  • That bipartisanship led to support for the plan from a Republican criminal justice reform advocate, Kate Boccia with the National Incarceration Association. “I have very personal expectations about [Abrams’] plan to build on Gov. Deal’s legacy and implement evidence-based solutions that make our communities safer without tearing families apart,” Boccia said in a statement. “As a mother who lost her son to addiction — the same addiction that led to his incarceration — I’ve witnessed the machinery of a cruel system that fails to correct and keep us safe.”
  • “You cannot simply punish your way to safety. You have to prepare for people who come back into the community,” Abrams said.

Other proposals by Abrams include eliminating private probation, requiring civil penalties instead of criminal for some traffic and low-level drug offenses, and enacting a “clean slate” law to automatically clear criminal records after a certain amount of time.

Does Abrams support convicted felons being able to legally purchase a firearm if their criminal records are cleared, or is the “clean slate” law not quite as clean as she’s touting? Something tells me it’s the latter, though a platform that prevents those without criminal records from lawfully carrying in public places while allowing convicted felons to legally purchase a gun does sound like something that Abrams would come up with and approve of.

Abrams’ incomprehensible positions extend to her justification for pushing for repeal of many of Georgia’s carry laws, which she claims were only approved by Republican legislators because they “tend to vote with their leadership more than they vote with their constituents”, while also telling Axios that “‘making gun laws to win elections is the wrong direction for the state.”

If constituents didn’t want these laws, then presumably they wouldn’t vote for the legislators who approve them, right? Abrams is arguing that lawmakers are ignoring the will of voters even though she tacitly acknowledges that these laws are popular with them. Of course, she also says we can’t “punish our way to safety” while hoping to impose new criminal penalties on the lawful carrying of firearms, which is also nonsensical.

Kemp very much has the inside track to be re-elected this fall, and all of Abrams’ bloviating about guns and gun control won’t change that. Still, I do hope that Kemp and Abrams end up on a debate state at some point between now and November, if only to see Abrams try to square her anti-gun statements with her soft-on-crime positions.