The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette
When Fort Wayne police answered a shooting call at a home in September, they found Justin T. Wiley with a gunshot wound in the middle of his upper back, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Wiley, 32, told police he put a handgun on a bed in the home of a woman he was visiting, then her 2-year-old son grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger. Wiley, who is not legally allowed to carry a gun because of prior felony convictions, was charged with neglect of a child and unlawful possession of a handgun.
According to data collected by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, that September shooting contributed to Indiana having the third-highest number of unintentional shootings by children so far in 2023, resulting in nine children killed and 18 others injured.
Everytown’s troubling data has prompted one Democratic state lawmaker to revive a failed attempt to promote safe firearm storage and penalize adults with children in the home who fail to do so.
“It highlights how serious the situation is,” Rep. Mitch Gore, D-Indianapolis, told The Journal Gazette Monday of the Everytown report, “and it strengthens my resolve.”
In the Everytown analysis, Indiana’s death rate fell behind just Texas and Florida, whose populations are four times and three times larger, respectively, than that of the Hoosier State. Shootings involved children as old as 17 and as young as 2, spanning from northeast Indiana to Evansville. While many of the incidents have taken place in larger cities, children have died in rural areas as well.
Gore, a captain with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, said two incidents have occurred in his district since last year, including a shooting that killed a 4-year-old.
“This past summer, in Cumberland, we had a 4-year-old little girl killed by her 5-year-old brother after they came across an unsecured handgun while grandma was downstairs babysitting a bunch of kids,” he said. “And then we all saw the year before a toddler running through an apartment complex in his diaper waving a handgun around in Beech Grove, which is also in my district.”
Gore plans to reintroduce a safe-storage bill in the coming legislative session this January, he said, and expects support from some Republican lawmakers, though the GOP supermajority struck his original safe-storage amendment from 2022’s House Bill 1296, which repealed the law requiring a license to carry a handgun in Indiana.
Gore’s proposal would make it a crime to leave a firearm unsecured, but it also is intended to create awareness among adults that guns should be locked up away from children.
“They have been receptive, some of them, to my and others’ attempts to get this done,” he said of Republican legislators. “Rural communities are just as likely, if not more likely, to have firearms in the home. So I think even legislators from other parts of the state understand the need to take this issue seriously, and the need to remind gun owners of their responsibilities, not just their rights.”
Indiana gun laws provide that a child’s parent or guardian commits the crime of “dangerous control of a child” if he or she knowingly, intentionally or recklessly permits a child to possess a firearm. But there’s no law that either requires unattended firearms to be stored in a certain way, or a locking device to accompany the sale of a firearm.
State lawmakers should consider legislation mandating all firearms be securely stowed in a locked gun safe or be fitted with trigger locks so they can’t be accessed by curious children. Hoosiers must show proof of insurance after purchasing a vehicle. Why shouldn’t it be compulsory for gun owners to safely store firearms in their homes?
Even the most diligent gun-owning parents can’t watch their children every second of the day, which is why safe storage is critical for all Hoosier residents.
