guns

“If we are going to be able to say, ‘Indy Welcomes All,’ we need that to hold true,” says Visit Indy’s Chris Gahl.

He suddenly vaulted from his desk chair to retrieve his open briefcase, which, he explained later, held a loaded gun. What if he hadn’t? What if our kids had discovered the weapon and thought it a plaything? What if?

“It seems like every other day, there’s an incident,” says Vernell Miller. “Shootings happen so frequently that folks in the community develop an apathy. That’s alarming to me.”

It’s simplistic to point to one thing—guns—and say that’s the problem.

“We take security very seriously,” says Jay Ricker of Anderson-based Ricker Oil Co.

After experiencing this and the emotional toll, some might hesitate to pull their gun again.

“I don’t tell many people we own guns, which is why I don’t want to be identified here. I’m not sure how that would go over with other moms.”

Criminals “try to prey on people they think are weak,” says Just Pizza owner Joey Davis, who claims he once had a gun pressed into his stomach on a delivery before he escaped on foot, uninjured.

“The rhetoric of the NRA has created an extremist group terrified their guns are going to be taken away.”

“Yes, I’ve carried a gun into the Statehouse in the past. Why? Because I can. It’s America.”

From homicides to suicides, self-defense to police shootings, firearms claimed close to 200 lives in Marion County last year.

Indianapolis does not have a gun problem or a homicide problem or a crime problem or a socioeconomic problem or a drug problem. It has an all-of-the-above problem.

Where some of our more noteworthy state and local regulations fall on the pro-control–to–pro-gun spectrum

“A common misconception is that we’re searching for the bullet. We don’t care about the bullet.”

“It’s a crazy world, and you have to be more vigilant than you think.”