Residents in Indiana can now own manufactured sawed-off shotguns starting July 1 under a new law that was passed earlier this year.
Senate Bill 433, signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence last April 29, repealed an Indiana statute that prohibited the manufacturing, importing, selling or possessing of sawed-off shotgun.
Under the law, sawed-off shot gun is defined as a shotgun having one or more barrels less than 19 inches in length or any weapon made from a shotgun through alteration or modification if the weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches.
The bill was earlier passed by Indiana's Senate with a 44-6 vote last February and by the state House of Representatives last March with an 85-14 vote.
Republican State Sen. Jim Tomes said the new legislation will bring Indiana's state law in conformity with federal regulations allowing the ownership of short-barreled shotguns by people who pass background checks for permits from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The law also allows a court to sentence a person up to 10 years in prison for committing certain crimes using a sawed-off shotgun.
"You can saw off the barrel but you'll spend 10 years in a federal penitentiary doing that," Tomes told RTV6 Indiana. "These guns are manufactured by licensed manufacturers and they're under heavy regulations."
Twelve persons in Indiana were convicted and sentenced from 2008 to 2013 under the shotgun prohibition law, according to Indiana's Legislative Services Agency.
It said that the US ATF reported that 8,637 short-barreled shotguns are registered with the bureau as of March 2014.
Tomes said short-barreled shotguns are expensive and owned mostly by gun collectors.
The Indiana chapter of the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America did not object to the repeal of the shotgun prohibition law when the bill was being heard. They said they were more concerned about bills that aimed to repeal state laws for handgun licensing and allowing colleges to impose campus bans on firearms. The bills were not passed.
