opinion

Tully wrong about proposed gun law

I like Matt Tully. I respect the way he courageously sticks to his opinions — even when he is shouted down by a vocal majority. But in his July 24 column, “A small but welcome step in the gun debate,” Tully again advocated for a gun control measure that will have absolutely no effect on violent crime in Indianapolis and will, in fact, only punish law-abiding gun owners — in this case the actual victims of crime.

Proposed Ordinance 228, offered by Councilman Kip Tew, is short and sweet. After defining a “firearm,” it simply states the following: “If a firearm is lost or stolen, the owner or possessor of the firearm must report the loss or theft to the Marion County Health Department within 48 hours after the owner or possessor learns of the loss or theft.”

On its face, the ordinance seems to make sense. As I’ve often preached, any responsible gun owner should report a lost or stolen gun immediately — both for his own protection and also to assist law enforcement in recovering that firearm or identifying it as lost or stolen. But criminalizing the failure to report a lost or stolen gun is a wholly different issue, and the proposed ordinance is completely nonsensical for several reasons.

First, while Councilman Tew is a lawyer, he apparently doesn’t spend much time in the courtroom — because the proposed ordinance is completely unenforceable in a court of law. Here’s why: A “trace” done on the serial number of any firearm (recovered at a crime scene or otherwise) reveals only the original purchaser of that gun from a retailer, a federal firearms licensee. Contrary to the whims of gun control advocates, there is no requirement in Indiana or at the federal level for any “registration” or other documentation of the transfer of the ownership of a firearm after its original purchase. So, let’s say a stolen gun is recovered at a crime scene in Indianapolis. Unless the owner from whom the gun was stolen comes forward and admits that the gun is his, admits that he discovered it stolen, and admits the exact date and time he discovered it stolen, how could he possibly be prosecuted for a violation of the ordinance? He can’t be, because even if he was the original purchaser of the gun who could be identified through a trace, all he has to do to avoid prosecution is to say he sold the gun after its original purchase to an unnamed buyer. How could the City of Indianapolis prove otherwise? It couldn’t — and that’s the folly of Tew’s ordinance.

But there is an even more fundamental flaw in Proposed Ordinance 228. Like so many gun control measures advocated by Tully and others, the proposed law would have absolutely no effect on criminals, assuming it could ever be enforced. (Last time I checked, it is already illegal to steal a gun in Indiana.) Now Tully and Tew want to also make it illegal to be the victim of a theft if you fail to report the crime, to the Marion County Health Department, of all places. Once again, the law-abiding gun owner bears the brunt of a law advanced in the name of “reducing gun violence,” when it would clearly have no such effect.

And consider the absurd applications of this proposed law. A man recently attended one of my courses who had been shot by a burglar who discovered the homeowner’s gun and used it to shoot him three times after the victim arrived home and walked in on the crime. The homeowner then spent nearly six months in the hospital — six weeks in a medically induced coma. Because he saw very clearly that the burglar had stolen his gun (immediately before he was shot with it), the victim would be subject to a $2,500 liability under Tew’s proposed ordinance (in addition to a mountain of hospital bills), because he failed to report the gun stolen while he was in the hospital in a coma. Make sense to you?

Lastly, the ordinance is unquestionably illegal under the Indiana Firearms Preemption Act, which prohibits the regulation of firearms by local governments. For that reason, the ordinance, if adopted, would subject the city to liability under the preemption act, which allows for the recovery of liquidated damages of treble attorneys’ fees (and attorneys’ fees themselves) by any successful litigant.

Guy Relford

attorney

Carmel