Taking Aim at Indiana Gun Law Misconceptions
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Larry Holderman and Sheriff Aaron Rovenstine; and Kevin Denlinger, gunsmith at Tactical & Hunting Solutions, North Webster, helped clarify some of those misconceptions.
Short-Barreled Shotguns
A change July 1 in state law regarding short-barreled rifles and shotguns – also known as sawed-off shotguns – may cause misconceptions.
“The way I understand it, is you can have one now if you apply for an ATF paperwork. You still have to go through the ATF to get one. I think it has to come from a manufacturer, a Class III dealer is what it is,” Holderman said. “But they still have to go through a Class III dealer. You can’t go out here and make your own sawed-off shotgun or anything like that. Indiana is allowing it now, just like they do with the machine guns.”
Indiana has allowed for people to purchase machine guns for years as long as they go through the ATF.
“The sheriff’s department will have nothing to do with (sawed-off shotguns) at the beginning,” Holderman said. “You have to go through a Class III dealer, and they have to go through the ATF. Eventually, the sheriff would get involved with it and he’d have to sign off for the county.”
Denlinger said the short-barreled rifles and shotguns are legal with a tax stamp.
“As of July 1, you’ll have to have a tax stamp. You can buy that gun here through us, but you have to send your tax stamp information in to obtain that,” Denlinger said.
He said while they have not sold any short-barreled rifles or shotguns yet, they have sold lots of silencers.
“Silencers in Indiana are legal. You have to have a tax stamp for it, but it’s perfectly legal to own with a tax stamp,” Denlinger said. “A misconception that people have is that silencers are illegal.”
In most European countries, Denlinger said silencers are no big deal. “Basically, it’s only in America,” he said.
The wait to get a tax stamp back for a silencer is four to six months.
Open Carry
Some of the biggest misconceptions are regarding the carrying of guns .
Rovenstine said, “I think that people don’t understand that they can carry it. They think it has to be concealed. You can carry it.”
He said his department often gets calls from people saying someone else is carrying their gun out in public – open carry. If a person has a permit though, they can carry a gun openly or concealed.
Denlinger said, “People wonder what the Indiana law is regarding concealed carry, and in Indiana what we have is a ... license to carry a handgun. The law doesn’t specify concealed or non-concealed. All it specifies is that you have a right to carry it, or permitted to carry it.”
He said Indiana has been “flirting” with the idea of going to Constitutional law, which would guarantee a person’s Second Amendment rights and they wouldn’t have to have a permit at all. “Which is really the right thing to do,” Denlinger said.
As for guns at a school, Holderman said, “It has to be (locked) in your vehicle and all you are doing is dropping off or picking up a student. They allow that.”
According to a March 2014 Indianapolis Star story, state law changed so that “teachers, parents and school visitors can keep guns concealed and locked in their cars in school parking lots. Student gun club members also could have guns in their cars with permission from school principals. ... Guns are still banned in school buildings and on school buses, lawmakers said.”
Holderman said businesses – such as restaurants or movie theaters – can ask people not to bring their guns inside.
“If they ask you to leave, you must leave,” Holderman said.
There are a few places where the state prohibits guns like casinos and the state fairgrounds when the state fair is going on. “Things like that,” Holderman said. “Those places, that’s by state law.”
Rovenstine said most gun owners know where and when they can and can not carry a gun. “It’s just like here – we don’t allow them to carry a gun into the courtroom, but it’s posted. We post that no guns are allowed in the courthouse. There are places that can prohibit them.”
If you have a gun in your vehicle while driving, and are pulled over, you are not required to tell the officer about the gun but it is a courtesy, Holderman said.
“Hands on the steering wheel, say, ‘Officer, I do have a firearm in the vehicle,’ and then listen to what he tells you after that,” Holderman said.
As for crossing state lines, Rovenstine said, there are 27 states that honor Indiana’s gun permits. Those are called “Compact States.” “You just have to check on that before you travel,” he cautioned.
Semiautomatic v. Automatic
A misconception about the types of guns Hoosiers can own, Holderman said, is, “They will call a semi-automatic or automatic the same exact thing. And that is not true.”
An automatic is a full-fledged machine gun and controlled by the ATF, he said. A semi-automatic is not.
“I think that’s one of the biggest (misconceptions) I hear about. You hear it on the news, you hear it from other people. They have no idea what’s going on. They think a semi-automatic is a machine gun, and it’s not,” Holderman said.
He said he can tell by looking which is a semi-automatic and which isn’t, though the “common man” may not be able to tell the difference.
Semi-automatics in Kosciusko County number in the thousands, he said. As for automatics, “there are some, but they went through the paperwork and the sheriff has signed off on it.”
Denlinger said Tactical & Hunting Solutions can sell an automatic because it is a Class III dealer.
“Class III firearm dealers can sell a full-auto firearm to a person who has paid the tax stamp and gone through the process to get that,” he said. “But they’re so expensive. A full auto is a $16,000 gun to start off. You’re not going to have the average person (buy one).”
City Limits
Shooting within any city limits is prohibited.
“Out in the country, you can shoot as long as you’re not using your neighbor’s house for a backstop. Shoot in a safe direction, you’re not shooting across the roadways, things like that, you can shoot out in the country. A safe backstop is the answer,” Holderman stated.
“But then there’s a lot of housing additions in this county, which would be ... unsafe to shoot,” Holderman cautioned.
Rovenstine added, “A lot of people have lived in cities or whatever and have gotten out into the county and wonder if there’s an ordinance against shooting and there’s not in this county. Like Larry said, you can’t be reckless – I guess that’s the key word.”
Others who move from the city out into the county call the sheriff’s department about their neighbor shooting for target practice, but there’s no ordinance or law against them doing that, Rovenstine said.
Buying & Selling; Permits & Registration
For a person looking to buy a gun, Holderman said there are many places to purchase one. “If you want to buy it from a dealer, just ask to see their Federal Firearms License. If you really want to see it. If you go to Walmart or Big R, some of those places, they’re legal,” he said.
If a person decides they no longer want to own a particular gun, Holderman said that to make it “really right,” the gun owner should find a person to buy it and then go to a gun dealer and have the gun transferred into the buyer’s name.
Denlinger said, “A private individual does not have to do a transfer of firearms, although it is a good idea because it gives traceability in case that firearm gets misused. You can say, ‘Here’s my bill of sale for that firearm.’ It kind of protects you. The gun shop will do a transfer for you if you would like to do that. And we also will transfer a gun from one FFL to another in another state also for you, provided that it’s legal in the other state.”
“Do you legally have to do that? No,” said Holderman of transferring gun ownership through a gun shop. “But if it makes you feel better, then go to a gun dealer and do that. There will be a fee for that, of course, from the dealer. That’s for a handgun. I don’t know anybody who does that for a rifle or shotgun. There’s no gun registration in the State of Indiana.”
Rovenstine added, “Talk about misconceptions – you still do have people come in and want to register their gun at the sheriff’s department.”
“Those days are done,” Holderman said.
“You do not have to register your gun,” Rovenstine emphasized.
Denlinger said, “There’s no such thing as registration in Indiana. What we do when someone comes in the store and buys a gun is we fill out what’s called 4473. That’s a federal form that asks questions that you answer. After that we’ll call in that person’s name and any identification they give us, and verify that they’re not a felon. That goes through the FBI. What that does is it verifies that the person doesn’t have any felonies or anything against them that would prohibit them from owning that firearm legally. But your firearm in and of itself is not recorded, it’s not given to them. All we do is tell them whether it’s a pistol, rifle or shotgun and that’s basically it. So there’s no such thing as gun registration in Indiana.”
If a person buys their gun and just wants to take it from the place of purchase to home, Holderman said they don’t need a permit. “Keep it wrapped up in the trunk of your car, unloaded. You can take it home. The way the law reads now, even for target practice, you can take it from your house to the place of target practice without a permit and back home again as long as it’s secured and not accessible to the driver.”
According to information from the Indiana State Police website, there are dozens of criteria for an Indiana resident to get a permit, including that they must be at least 18 years old.
Denlinger said Indiana law states a person must be 21 years old to purchase handgun ammunition and a handgun, but federal law says you can be 18 to carry one.
Holderman stated, “Getting a permit is probably the best thing for a handgun. That kind of protects you. If you happen to forget and leave it in the car after target practice – if you get stopped at 3 in the morning, you haven’t been out target practicing, so how are you going to explain that one? It’s best to have the permit.”
Denlinger said, “Bottom line is, if you don’t have a permit to carry, then you need to have your ammunition separated (from the firearm).”
A person does not have to have a handgun permit prior to purchasing the firearm.
“Here’s one that’s important for people to know. It’s called a straw purchase,” Denlinger said. “A straw purchase is when one person comes in and buys a gun knowingly for another person.”
If a person is caught doing that, it’s automatically 10 years in jail.
“You cannot do that,” Denlinger said. “You can buy a gun for yourself, and then you can gift that gun later on to a family member or something like that. But you can not intentionally buy a firearm for another person – the intent can not be to do that.”
An exception would be that a grandparent or a parent can buy their kids firearms, or kids can buy their parents firearms; but a husband or wife can not buy their spouse a firearm.
“It’s just bananas,” Denlinger said. “And if someone comes to our counter and says, ‘I want to buy this gun for my buddy John over here,’ – nope. Done deal. You’re done, you’re out of here. Straw purchase.”
Know The Law
“One thing I encourage people to do is to take one of these (copy of the Constitution of the United States),” Denlinger said. “People should know their Constitutional rights just because of how many of them are being trampled on in our country today.”
In the end, anything unfortunate that happens involving a gun isn’t the fault of the firearm, he said.
“In my opinion, guns aren’t the enemy. The people behind them are the enemy. We have people who are good people that carry all the time and you would never know it – they don’t advertise it, they don’t show it, and the problem is that the people who use them for the wrong reasons are what gives everyone else a bad rap,” Denlinger said. “And then the media runs off with it and makes it into a big (deal) about how the gun was the bad thing. Well, information that people should know is that I’ve had a gun laying in my closet for about 15 years now and it’s never moved, gone off or hurt anyone.”[[In-content Ad]]
Latest News
E-Editions
Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Larry Holderman and Sheriff Aaron Rovenstine; and Kevin Denlinger, gunsmith at Tactical & Hunting Solutions, North Webster, helped clarify some of those misconceptions.
Short-Barreled Shotguns
A change July 1 in state law regarding short-barreled rifles and shotguns – also known as sawed-off shotguns – may cause misconceptions.
“The way I understand it, is you can have one now if you apply for an ATF paperwork. You still have to go through the ATF to get one. I think it has to come from a manufacturer, a Class III dealer is what it is,” Holderman said. “But they still have to go through a Class III dealer. You can’t go out here and make your own sawed-off shotgun or anything like that. Indiana is allowing it now, just like they do with the machine guns.”
Indiana has allowed for people to purchase machine guns for years as long as they go through the ATF.
“The sheriff’s department will have nothing to do with (sawed-off shotguns) at the beginning,” Holderman said. “You have to go through a Class III dealer, and they have to go through the ATF. Eventually, the sheriff would get involved with it and he’d have to sign off for the county.”
Denlinger said the short-barreled rifles and shotguns are legal with a tax stamp.
“As of July 1, you’ll have to have a tax stamp. You can buy that gun here through us, but you have to send your tax stamp information in to obtain that,” Denlinger said.
He said while they have not sold any short-barreled rifles or shotguns yet, they have sold lots of silencers.
“Silencers in Indiana are legal. You have to have a tax stamp for it, but it’s perfectly legal to own with a tax stamp,” Denlinger said. “A misconception that people have is that silencers are illegal.”
In most European countries, Denlinger said silencers are no big deal. “Basically, it’s only in America,” he said.
The wait to get a tax stamp back for a silencer is four to six months.
Open Carry
Some of the biggest misconceptions are regarding the carrying of guns .
Rovenstine said, “I think that people don’t understand that they can carry it. They think it has to be concealed. You can carry it.”
He said his department often gets calls from people saying someone else is carrying their gun out in public – open carry. If a person has a permit though, they can carry a gun openly or concealed.
Denlinger said, “People wonder what the Indiana law is regarding concealed carry, and in Indiana what we have is a ... license to carry a handgun. The law doesn’t specify concealed or non-concealed. All it specifies is that you have a right to carry it, or permitted to carry it.”
He said Indiana has been “flirting” with the idea of going to Constitutional law, which would guarantee a person’s Second Amendment rights and they wouldn’t have to have a permit at all. “Which is really the right thing to do,” Denlinger said.
As for guns at a school, Holderman said, “It has to be (locked) in your vehicle and all you are doing is dropping off or picking up a student. They allow that.”
According to a March 2014 Indianapolis Star story, state law changed so that “teachers, parents and school visitors can keep guns concealed and locked in their cars in school parking lots. Student gun club members also could have guns in their cars with permission from school principals. ... Guns are still banned in school buildings and on school buses, lawmakers said.”
Holderman said businesses – such as restaurants or movie theaters – can ask people not to bring their guns inside.
“If they ask you to leave, you must leave,” Holderman said.
There are a few places where the state prohibits guns like casinos and the state fairgrounds when the state fair is going on. “Things like that,” Holderman said. “Those places, that’s by state law.”
Rovenstine said most gun owners know where and when they can and can not carry a gun. “It’s just like here – we don’t allow them to carry a gun into the courtroom, but it’s posted. We post that no guns are allowed in the courthouse. There are places that can prohibit them.”
If you have a gun in your vehicle while driving, and are pulled over, you are not required to tell the officer about the gun but it is a courtesy, Holderman said.
“Hands on the steering wheel, say, ‘Officer, I do have a firearm in the vehicle,’ and then listen to what he tells you after that,” Holderman said.
As for crossing state lines, Rovenstine said, there are 27 states that honor Indiana’s gun permits. Those are called “Compact States.” “You just have to check on that before you travel,” he cautioned.
Semiautomatic v. Automatic
A misconception about the types of guns Hoosiers can own, Holderman said, is, “They will call a semi-automatic or automatic the same exact thing. And that is not true.”
An automatic is a full-fledged machine gun and controlled by the ATF, he said. A semi-automatic is not.
“I think that’s one of the biggest (misconceptions) I hear about. You hear it on the news, you hear it from other people. They have no idea what’s going on. They think a semi-automatic is a machine gun, and it’s not,” Holderman said.
He said he can tell by looking which is a semi-automatic and which isn’t, though the “common man” may not be able to tell the difference.
Semi-automatics in Kosciusko County number in the thousands, he said. As for automatics, “there are some, but they went through the paperwork and the sheriff has signed off on it.”
Denlinger said Tactical & Hunting Solutions can sell an automatic because it is a Class III dealer.
“Class III firearm dealers can sell a full-auto firearm to a person who has paid the tax stamp and gone through the process to get that,” he said. “But they’re so expensive. A full auto is a $16,000 gun to start off. You’re not going to have the average person (buy one).”
City Limits
Shooting within any city limits is prohibited.
“Out in the country, you can shoot as long as you’re not using your neighbor’s house for a backstop. Shoot in a safe direction, you’re not shooting across the roadways, things like that, you can shoot out in the country. A safe backstop is the answer,” Holderman stated.
“But then there’s a lot of housing additions in this county, which would be ... unsafe to shoot,” Holderman cautioned.
Rovenstine added, “A lot of people have lived in cities or whatever and have gotten out into the county and wonder if there’s an ordinance against shooting and there’s not in this county. Like Larry said, you can’t be reckless – I guess that’s the key word.”
Others who move from the city out into the county call the sheriff’s department about their neighbor shooting for target practice, but there’s no ordinance or law against them doing that, Rovenstine said.
Buying & Selling; Permits & Registration
For a person looking to buy a gun, Holderman said there are many places to purchase one. “If you want to buy it from a dealer, just ask to see their Federal Firearms License. If you really want to see it. If you go to Walmart or Big R, some of those places, they’re legal,” he said.
If a person decides they no longer want to own a particular gun, Holderman said that to make it “really right,” the gun owner should find a person to buy it and then go to a gun dealer and have the gun transferred into the buyer’s name.
Denlinger said, “A private individual does not have to do a transfer of firearms, although it is a good idea because it gives traceability in case that firearm gets misused. You can say, ‘Here’s my bill of sale for that firearm.’ It kind of protects you. The gun shop will do a transfer for you if you would like to do that. And we also will transfer a gun from one FFL to another in another state also for you, provided that it’s legal in the other state.”
“Do you legally have to do that? No,” said Holderman of transferring gun ownership through a gun shop. “But if it makes you feel better, then go to a gun dealer and do that. There will be a fee for that, of course, from the dealer. That’s for a handgun. I don’t know anybody who does that for a rifle or shotgun. There’s no gun registration in the State of Indiana.”
Rovenstine added, “Talk about misconceptions – you still do have people come in and want to register their gun at the sheriff’s department.”
“Those days are done,” Holderman said.
“You do not have to register your gun,” Rovenstine emphasized.
Denlinger said, “There’s no such thing as registration in Indiana. What we do when someone comes in the store and buys a gun is we fill out what’s called 4473. That’s a federal form that asks questions that you answer. After that we’ll call in that person’s name and any identification they give us, and verify that they’re not a felon. That goes through the FBI. What that does is it verifies that the person doesn’t have any felonies or anything against them that would prohibit them from owning that firearm legally. But your firearm in and of itself is not recorded, it’s not given to them. All we do is tell them whether it’s a pistol, rifle or shotgun and that’s basically it. So there’s no such thing as gun registration in Indiana.”
If a person buys their gun and just wants to take it from the place of purchase to home, Holderman said they don’t need a permit. “Keep it wrapped up in the trunk of your car, unloaded. You can take it home. The way the law reads now, even for target practice, you can take it from your house to the place of target practice without a permit and back home again as long as it’s secured and not accessible to the driver.”
According to information from the Indiana State Police website, there are dozens of criteria for an Indiana resident to get a permit, including that they must be at least 18 years old.
Denlinger said Indiana law states a person must be 21 years old to purchase handgun ammunition and a handgun, but federal law says you can be 18 to carry one.
Holderman stated, “Getting a permit is probably the best thing for a handgun. That kind of protects you. If you happen to forget and leave it in the car after target practice – if you get stopped at 3 in the morning, you haven’t been out target practicing, so how are you going to explain that one? It’s best to have the permit.”
Denlinger said, “Bottom line is, if you don’t have a permit to carry, then you need to have your ammunition separated (from the firearm).”
A person does not have to have a handgun permit prior to purchasing the firearm.
“Here’s one that’s important for people to know. It’s called a straw purchase,” Denlinger said. “A straw purchase is when one person comes in and buys a gun knowingly for another person.”
If a person is caught doing that, it’s automatically 10 years in jail.
“You cannot do that,” Denlinger said. “You can buy a gun for yourself, and then you can gift that gun later on to a family member or something like that. But you can not intentionally buy a firearm for another person – the intent can not be to do that.”
An exception would be that a grandparent or a parent can buy their kids firearms, or kids can buy their parents firearms; but a husband or wife can not buy their spouse a firearm.
“It’s just bananas,” Denlinger said. “And if someone comes to our counter and says, ‘I want to buy this gun for my buddy John over here,’ – nope. Done deal. You’re done, you’re out of here. Straw purchase.”
Know The Law
“One thing I encourage people to do is to take one of these (copy of the Constitution of the United States),” Denlinger said. “People should know their Constitutional rights just because of how many of them are being trampled on in our country today.”
In the end, anything unfortunate that happens involving a gun isn’t the fault of the firearm, he said.
“In my opinion, guns aren’t the enemy. The people behind them are the enemy. We have people who are good people that carry all the time and you would never know it – they don’t advertise it, they don’t show it, and the problem is that the people who use them for the wrong reasons are what gives everyone else a bad rap,” Denlinger said. “And then the media runs off with it and makes it into a big (deal) about how the gun was the bad thing. Well, information that people should know is that I’ve had a gun laying in my closet for about 15 years now and it’s never moved, gone off or hurt anyone.”[[In-content Ad]]
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092