Can you just imagine the blissninnies in California or the PRNJ packing heat on the Statehouse floor?One in six Indiana lawmakers has a permit to carry a firearm, and some even pack their guns when they saunter onto the floor of the Indiana House and Senate, The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne reported Sunday.
These pistol-packing politicians have no problem with the availability of weapons in the Statehouse, and some even welcome the guns given the lax security at the state Capitol.
"If someone opens fire from the balcony, I want all the guns I can shooting back. Unless, of course, there are school kids up there," said Rep. Matthew Whetstone, whose small .22-caliber pistol weighs no more than a set of keys in his pants pocket.
Whetstone, R-Brownsburg, is one of 25 House and Senate members with valid permits to carry firearms, according to a review of the Indiana State Police firearms database by the newspaper.
That is about 17 percent of the General Assembly, compared with about 7 percent of the eligible state population with permits.
All kidding aside, it is their right to carry a gun under the Indiana Constitution (because of that right, Indiana's permit law is a 'shall issue' law) and I applaud those who are exercising that right.
Of course, the Journal-Gazette article laid the groundwork for an editorial in that paper denouncing the practice.
Editorial
A gun is not a 'vestige of frontier justice'. It's a tool. And like any other tool, it can be misused. And as a matter of record, there hasn't been any shootings by legislators in the Statehouse since the current CCW system was put into place in 1935.Pistol-packing Indiana lawmakers should take note of the shooting death of a New York City councilman last month: A loaded gun couldn't save James Davis' life.
If legislators truly are concerned for their personal safety, their first effort should be to ban guns from their own aisles. The very symbol of state government is no place for a vestige of frontier justice
That phrase is more revealing of the mindset of the editor than anything to do with the state of gun laws in Indiana.
What killed James Davis was his sense of noblesse oblige in waving the man that killed him through security without any checks on him at all. His killer was violating NYC law by merely possessing the pistol, much less wearing it concealed and carrying it into City Hall.
This says it best:
If you don't trust your fellow legislators to not pull guns on you, then perhaps you should reconsider your job."There have been people in both the House and Senate who have worn weapons for years and there has never been an issue of them being angry and pulling it," said Sen. Tom Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, who has a permit but does not carry a weapon in the Statehouse.
Torr said, "There is not a single person in that chamber that I worry about in terms of them pulling a gun on each other."
Christ, I'm the most hotheaded person I know, but I've never even considered pulling a gun on someone I'm merely angry at.
To get me to draw my weapon on you, you have to be posing a credible threat of death or serious bodily injury to me or a third party.
Banning guns in the Statehouse wouldn't accomplish anything other than making a few blissninnies feel good about themselves.
