SAVING THE SHOOTERS?
IMPD’s Getting Illegal Guns Off The Street
I started gathering information for this post days ago. Since then three more people have been killed. In spite of law enforcement efforts, the toll ticks on.
During the COVID pandemic, most of us were too busy adjusting our paper masks to notice that crime was ballooning. Since then, the crime statistics are down, largely due to an effort by Indianapolis Metropolitan Police to get “crime guns” off the street. For the first three months of 2025, the Indiana Crime Guns Task Force reports the seizure of 115 illegal firearms and 167 machine gun conversion devices, and has made 75 state arrests and six federal arrests. With this kind of momentum, the task force is on track to surpass their 2024 totals of over 270 seized firearms, 232 state arrests, and 16 federal arrests.
But IMPD Chief Chris Bailey is not spending any time collecting accolades, because homicides and violence continue, and every life that can be saved is valuable. Operating with a staff that is around 300 deputies short, IMPD is also actively working to combat drug trafficking throughout the region and has seized a substantial amount of narcotics in the first quarter of this year, including fentanyl, marijuana, and methamphetamine. The Crime Gun clean up effort tends to inhibit drug trafficking too. Narcotics and firearms are generally found together as people who traffic and sell drugs often use illegal firearms for self-defense and to protect their valuable products.
Meanwhile, Lake County may soon be the beneficiary of its own Crime Gun Task Force, as Governor Mike Braun recently signed legislation that would provide support for the effort in the northwest corner of our state. Meanwhile a number of legislative representatives across the state are interested in taking the program state-wide. For decades, many areas in Indiana operated under the delusion that violent crime in their counties was rare to nonexistent. The “real crime,” they believed happened in cities like Gary and Indianapolis. But that’s all in the past. In spite of a downward trend in violence overall, it’s not a localized problem much anymore.
Here’s the thing: When you take a gun out of the hand of a gang member or drug dealer, you are saving them too. Because when they use that gun and kill someone, they not only become a murderer, they become the hunted, and eventually, they become a number in a jumpsuit in a Federal prison—maybe for a decade, maybe for life. And, so many times, the gun was in the hand of an angry kid, who might otherwise have their whole life ahead of them. Control of illegal weapons not only saves the victims, it can save the would-be shooters as well. Do they matter?
Yes, they do.
Nancy
