Under a guilty plea earlier this year for misdemeanor intimidation, James Wesley Howell was supposed to forfeit all his guns.
But Clark County probation officers only took one of them.
Two months after the guilty plea, Howell was arrested in California with three assault rifles and chemicals for making explosives. Democratic Representative Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis) calls it a systemic failure at every level.
“So we need to put adequate money into the probation effort," DeLaney says. "We need to put adequate technological resources so that it’s easier and effective to report a violation.”
DeLaney also wants the legislature to ban assault weapons and enact universal background checks – something, he says, that will require Republicans to make a choice.
“My Republican friends have got to decide that protecting the majority of our people is more important that protecting their majority in the House.”
House Speaker Brian Bosma could not be reached for comment.
