Secrecy is bad idea

Sometimes the workings of the legislative mind defy all logic.

When The Indianapolis Star did a series of stories on gun permits that revealed the Indiana State Police were issuing permits even when local police had recommended against them, the response from the Indiana General Assembly was not to convene a series of hearings examining the permitting process to see if the ISP was doing a good job.

Instead, it was to draw a cloak of secrecy over the whole process.

Government not performing its duties well? Then let's not let the public have a look.

The argument for less transparency comes with claims that the privacy of gun permit applicants was somehow violated because their applications were public records.

But the real motive is simply to shut the public out of the equation entirely and make it more difficult to measure how well government is doing its job.

Gun issues, of course, are the third rail in politics. A simple observation that there are too many illegal guns on the streets of the state capital, for instance, can land a person in hot water.

But this is, at its core, not a gun issue. And it's not a privacy issue.

It's a public safety issue and it's an issue of government transparency.

They may tell you it's all about protecting Second Amendment rights, but it's really all about keeping you from knowing what your government is doing and how well it's protecting Hoosier communities. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]