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from the Indianapolis Star
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/9/046938-2359-009.html
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/9/046938-2359-009.html
Armed activist testing gun ban
Trial in Danville is high noon for man who says local laws violate arms rights.
By Tim Evans
[email protected]
May 30, 2003
When he leaves his Plainfield home, Will Hutchens carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket and a pistol in his waistband.
It's a combination that could cost him $1,000.
As the Indy 1500 Gun & Knife Show opens at the Indiana State Fairgrounds today, Hutchens will go on trial in Hendricks Superior Court III in Danville, charged with violating a county ordinance prohibiting weapons in county-owned buildings.
In what is believed to be the first such challenge in the state, Hutchens, 55, contends the ordinance violates state and federal laws that guarantee his right to bear arms.
But legal experts say Hutchens' argument misses the mark on both the state and federal levels.
"There are limits on all of our constitutional rights, mostly for reasons of public safety, and I believe there is inherent authority in Indiana law to place these kinds of limits," said Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thode, who chairs the Indiana Judicial Center's court management committee.
Similar bans have come under fire or been overturned in a number of states, most recently Minnesota and New Mexico, where legislatures adopted rules prohibiting local entities from creating any laws more restrictive than the state's.
Dave Workman, director of communications for the Belleview, Wash.-based Citizens Committee For the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and senior editor for Gun Week magazine, said 35 states have such laws, which make gun regulation simpler and prevent local governments from adopting unreasonable rules.
"Legally licensed gun owners should not be faced with the prospect of being in violation of laws when they cross the road and end up in a different jurisdiction with different rules," he said.
But Indiana doesn't have a so-called pre-emption law, and that's an important distinction in Hutchens' case, experts say.
Greg Steuerwald, the Hendricks County attorney who will prosecute the case, said weapons bans in public buildings "are a very, very common situation" in Indiana and most other states.
More than half of Indiana's 92 counties have a county ordinance or judicial order -- or both -- limiting weapons in courtrooms and courthouses, according to Robert Champion, security adviser for the Indiana Judicial Center.
Thode's committee is also developing a statewide standard for court safety that includes a limit on weapons in courtrooms.
Many of the existing ordinances have been adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Champion said.
Hutchens, who is certified as a 4-H pistol and Indiana Department of Natural Resources hunting safety instructor and is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, says such bans are part of a trend of increasing restrictions on gun owners.
The Hendricks County ordinance was adopted in 1992, but he decided to mount his challenge -- by deliberately violating the ordinance -- in February after Plainfield officials banned weapons in town parks.
Getting arrested, however, proved harder than expected.
On Feb. 1, he went to a Plainfield park and called police, telling them he had a gun and requesting that they issue him a citation.
The officers who responded declined, he said, saying they had not yet been trained in enforcement of the new ban.
Three days later, he decided to try the county.
"I went to the courthouse in Danville and stopped a deputy and said, 'I've got a gun and you've got an ordinance,' " he said. "Then I asked him to write me a citation so I could get my challenge into court."
Now that it's there, experts and gun-rights activists say they don't expect Hutchens' challenge to go far.
"The record on being able to ban weapons in public places is pretty well-established in Indiana," said John Krull, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.
"Even the broadest interpretation of the Second Amendment allows for reasonable regulation," added Henry C. Karlson, professor of law at the Indiana University School of Law.
The National Rifle Association isn't on board with Hutchens, either.
John Crone, Indiana field representative to the NRA, said the group "supports the legal, lawful, rightful ownership of firearms.
And if there a law that says you can't take them in there, you shouldn't take them in."
Still, Hutchens is standing firm in his beliefs.
He has spent hours at the Plainfield Public Library, reading books on the Constitution, history and the law as he prepares to represent himself in court today.
"This is an issue of my citizenship and basic rights," he said.
He doesn't relish the prospect of being found guilty of the misdemeanor offense.
But Hutchens is more afraid of what could happen if the ban -- which he sees as another step in a growing erosion of constitutional rights -- is allowed to go unchecked.
If he loses today, he said, he is willing to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court.
"If they can do this, what's next? Banning guns on public streets and roads? Pretty soon the only place I will be allowed to have my gun is in my home," he said.
"Somebody has to do something."
Copyright 2003 IndyStar.com.
