The Gary Common Council voted 8-0 on Tuesday to approve an ordinance that bars residents from discharging firearms or other projectile weapons under most circumstances.
The legislation does not apply to law enforcement officers performing professional duties or marksmen using a "lawfully operated" gun range. It also exempts any licensed gun owner defending themselves or another person if "a reasonable and responsible adult would determine that discharging the firearm is of absolute and immediate necessity and that no alternative and less dangerous solution is feasible at the time."
Anyone else who fires a gun, bow, crossbow or air rifle will face a $250 fine for a first offense. The fine will increase for each subsequent violation, topping out at $2,500 for the fifth and all subsequent offenses.
The ordinance supplements existing Indiana statutes that make it a crime to intentionally take an action that imperils the safety of another person or their property.
"This is basically geared for a person that might be shooting for some type of recreational use or something like that," Gary Police Chief Derrick Cannon told the council's Public Safety Committee during its June 11 meeting. "And if that's the case and there's no other violation of state statue, then more than likely they will be documented and fined and it'll be a ticket, something similar to like a code violation."
The ordinance was amended at Tuesday's meeting to include air rifles, bows and crossbows in the prohibition, as well as to remove an exemption for hunters that was included in an earlier draft.
Gary Corporation Counsel Carla Morgan told the council that the latter change was made because "a large part of the the goal of this is to not allow people to hunt in the natural areas we have in the city, because they're all near populated areas and it's just inherently dangerous."
Councilman Kenneth Whisenton, D-at large, lauded the changes as a boon for public safety, recalling his own childhood experiences of getting in "trouble with bb and pellet guns."
"I appreciate you for including that," Whisenton told Morgan. "I'm older and wiser now, so I know how dangerous they can be."
Gary's municipal code already includes a variety of firearm regulations— including bans on the sale or ownership of assault weapons and on the possession of firearms or air rifles by minors.
Many of these rules are not enforceable, however. In 2011, then-Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a law that blocks municipalities and other local governments from regulating "the ownership, possession, carrying, transportation, registration, transfer and storage of firearms, ammunition and firearm accessories."
The law does not, however, specifically bar municipalities from regulating the use of firearms within their borders. Local ordinances restricting where firearms can be discharged are common across the Hoosier State.
Gary's new ordinance, the text of which states that it "shall not be construed to restrict or otherwise prohibit the legal possession, purchase or use of firearms" as allowed by Indiana law, mirrors similar legislation adopted in many of the city's peer communities.
A 2021 East Chicago ordinance, for instance, imposed a $500 fine on anyone discharging a firearm, with on-duty law enforcement and lawful gun range users exempted. The local law applies the same fine to any parent who knowingly allows a minor child to violate the prohibition.