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Senate panel limits gun immunity bill
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Senate panel limits gun immunity bill
By Niki Kelly
The Journal Gazette
INDIANAPOLIS - A Senate panel Tuesday pared down a bill that would have given near blanket civil immunity to firearms owners.
After intense debate on a single provision in House Bill 1349 last week, Sen. Robert L. Meeks, R-LaGrange, proposed an amendment limiting the legislation's effect.
The original language would have meant no gun owner could be sued when the person's gun was used in a crime by another person so long as the owner didn't know a crime would occur. It did not differentiate between the gun being stolen or an owner recklessly giving the gun to another person.
A national gun safety group labeled it the most sweeping immunity clause in the nation.
But Tuesday, the Senate Criminal, Civil and Public Policy Committee amended the bill so that immunity is only given to the owner of the firearm if the gun was obtained through a burglary, robbery, theft, criminal conversion or receiving stolen property.
"It puts the responsibility on the one who perpetrated the crime and not the owner of the gun," Meeks said.
After the amendment, the bill passed 8-2 and now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
The legislation is a direct response to an April 2003 Indiana Supreme Court decision that found gun owners have a responsibility to reasonably care for their firearms even in the privacy of their own homes.
The first-of-its-kind ruling reinstated a lawsuit filed by the family of slain Allen County Sheriff's Officer Eryk Heck against the owners of the gun, Raymond and Patricia Stoffer.
The estate is trying to prove the Stoffers were negligent in storing their firearm, which their adult, fugitive son Timothy Stoffer used to kill Heck and wound another officer during an August 1997 shootout.
Timothy Stoffer also died during the exchange.
According to court records, the Stoffers kept the gun hidden in the cushion of an armchair to which Timothy Stoffer had free and unfettered access.
Any final court or jury finding will focus on whether the Stoffers - who on occasion helped their son elude authorities - should have been able to reasonably foresee their son's actions.
The current legislation would apply only to future lawsuits.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/7980166.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
By Niki Kelly
The Journal Gazette
INDIANAPOLIS - A Senate panel Tuesday pared down a bill that would have given near blanket civil immunity to firearms owners.
After intense debate on a single provision in House Bill 1349 last week, Sen. Robert L. Meeks, R-LaGrange, proposed an amendment limiting the legislation's effect.
The original language would have meant no gun owner could be sued when the person's gun was used in a crime by another person so long as the owner didn't know a crime would occur. It did not differentiate between the gun being stolen or an owner recklessly giving the gun to another person.
A national gun safety group labeled it the most sweeping immunity clause in the nation.
But Tuesday, the Senate Criminal, Civil and Public Policy Committee amended the bill so that immunity is only given to the owner of the firearm if the gun was obtained through a burglary, robbery, theft, criminal conversion or receiving stolen property.
"It puts the responsibility on the one who perpetrated the crime and not the owner of the gun," Meeks said.
After the amendment, the bill passed 8-2 and now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
The legislation is a direct response to an April 2003 Indiana Supreme Court decision that found gun owners have a responsibility to reasonably care for their firearms even in the privacy of their own homes.
The first-of-its-kind ruling reinstated a lawsuit filed by the family of slain Allen County Sheriff's Officer Eryk Heck against the owners of the gun, Raymond and Patricia Stoffer.
The estate is trying to prove the Stoffers were negligent in storing their firearm, which their adult, fugitive son Timothy Stoffer used to kill Heck and wound another officer during an August 1997 shootout.
Timothy Stoffer also died during the exchange.
According to court records, the Stoffers kept the gun hidden in the cushion of an armchair to which Timothy Stoffer had free and unfettered access.
Any final court or jury finding will focus on whether the Stoffers - who on occasion helped their son elude authorities - should have been able to reasonably foresee their son's actions.
The current legislation would apply only to future lawsuits.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/7980166.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
Comments
Greg
Former
USMC
ANGLICO
T. Jefferson: "[When doing Constitutional interpretation], let us [go] back to the time when [it] was adopted. [Rather than] invent a meaning [let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
I maintain that a gun INSIDE MY LOCKED HOUSE but not necessarily in my SAFE *IS* under "reasonable care". I'm anxious to see how the slimeballs in the Senate word this thing to get around that point, which I'm sure they will....
I suspect strongly this is simply a pro-firearms-owner sounding bill that, if finally passed, really won't offer anything by way of REAL protection from liability. Hopefully, I'm wrong, but I don't think so...
Now we'll watch it as it goes before the full State Senate. This is much like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, only it's rider provisions instead of tails, and there's no blindfold. Who knows what the bill will look like if it passes the Senate.
Sorry to sound pessimistic. I'd like it to have retained its original power.