INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana law requires Hoosiers to go through a licensing process to legally carry a handgun. Some people believe it’s a system that doesn’t make sense. People like Hamilton County Sheriff Dennis Quakenbush.
“The system is backwards,” Quakenbush tells WIBC’s The Gun Guy, “the Constitution never intended for the government to allow this, this is a God-given natural right and we just have the process backwards.”
The goal of House Bill 1369 is quite simple: to repeal the law that requires Hoosiers to obtain a license to carry a handgun in Indiana. People who oppose the bill say repealing the law would empower criminals and make the jobs of police much more dangerous. That’s something Sheriff Quakenbush doesn’t agree with.
“The idea that we know whether or not someone has a gun permit or not doesn’t change how we approach a situation, and it doesn’t make us any more or less safe,” Quakenbush tells WIBC.
“If you make a traffic stop and you run the license plate of the person in front of you, you don’t know if that’s even the person in the vehicle,” Quakenbush continues, “so we train our law enforcement officers to assume that the person is armed and I don’t think knowing whether or not that person has a permit or not changes how that officer approaches it.”
Sheriff Quakenbush says this kind of law already exists in several other states, and that the data shows the difference between states that have adopted an open carry style law versus those who have not.
“We have this type of law in place in 16 states and really that’s what the data supports,” Quakenbush continues to explain to WIBC, “so we don’t have to make an emotional decision or a guess – we can look at some of the data and see that these states are among the safest.”
“When strict gun controls go in place, we have more violence with handguns, and so I think that’s really supported by the data,” Quakenbush tells WIBC.
House Bill 1369 did make progress this week. It passed out of the Public Policy Committee in the House and was approved by the Ways & Means Committee. Now it heads to a vote on the floor of the House this week, where it’s expected to pass and move over to the Senate.
Supporters like Sheriff Quakenbush continue to push forth the idea that the key to the bill is making it easier for law-abiding Hoosiers to arm themselves, rather than arming criminals or endangering police.
“I don’t believe this particular bill really does anything to impact the safety of the officers, I personally don’t believe that,” says Quakenbush.
You can listen to Sheriff Quakenbush’s full interview with WIBC’s The Gun Guy with Guy Relford here.
