Indiana Overwhelmed With Gun Permit Requests

Indiana State Police say they cannot put firearms in the hands of gun enthusiasts fast enough, as a serious backlog of gun permit requests has put thousands of would be pistol-packing Hoosiers on a waiting list for several months.

In fact, since the beginning of the year, many of the state’s gun shop owners have reported a significant increase in gun sales and of course, applications for gun permits – up from a monthly average of 4,000 to a whopping 23,000.

The Indiana State Police always see a spike in gun permit requests after a shooting tragedy, like Sandy Hook, says Indiana Police Captain Dave Bursten. “There was an explosion of people applying for gun permits at the end of December and into January,” he said.

However, even though the demand for permits is currently on the decline, the ISP is still experiencing a well above average influx of applications. Bursten says that the department has a limited amount of employee resources to conduct background checks, and when it comes to putting guns in the hands of citizens, there is no room for error.

“We’ve only got a limited amount of personnel that have to check all 23,000 of those, because the last thing we want to do is issue a gun permit to somebody that has a felony or criminal history,” said Bursten.

Indiana State Police advise that applying for a permit online is the quickest method.