In July 2023, running for mayor of Indianapolis, Jefferson Shreve stood up and proposed three gun laws.

Ban the sale of assault weapons. Repeal Indiana's permitless carry law. Raise the legal age to buy a gun from 18 to 21.

That was his public safety plan, announced as the city passed 100 homicides by mid-July. He was the Republican in the race. His opponent's campaign manager, Blake Hesch, said the speech showed Shreve was "willing to do or say anything to get elected."

Eighteen months later, on January 3, 2025 — his very first day as a member of Congress — Shreve signed on as an original cosponsor of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, the bill that would force every state to honor concealed carry permission from every other state, including the states that require no permit at all.

Same man. Opposite position. Eighteen months apart.

The NRA saw it coming and said so out loud

You don't usually get gun groups fact-checking Republicans. This one did.

Days before the May 2024 primary in Indiana's 6th District, the NRA's Political Victory Fund emailed its members in that district with a warning about Shreve. He was, it said, suggesting in campaign ads that he had an "A" rating from the group.

That was false. His actual grade was an F.

The email laid out why: the year before, Shreve had proposed banning certain firearms, raising the minimum purchase age to 21, and repealing Indiana's constitutional carry law. And then the line that has aged into a prophecy:

"Jefferson Shreve has yet to publicly renounce his support for these gun control proposals and has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted to protect your Second Amendment rights in Congress."

The NRA's complaint was that he couldn't be trusted to stay bought. That is not our argument. Our argument is simpler: a man who reversed his most publicized position the moment the electorate changed will reverse anything.

He spent $13.5 million losing the first race

The 2023 mayoral run wasn't a shoestring effort he could later disown. Shreve, who sold his Storage Express self-storage company to Extra Space Storage for $590 million in 2022, put $13.5 million of his own money into that campaign — 93% of everything it raised, in the most expensive mayoral election in Indianapolis history.

He bought enough television time to make sure every voter in Marion County knew where he stood on guns. Then he lost anyway, and Joe Hogsett won a third term.

The next year he ran in a safe Republican district instead — and the positions went with the district.

What he actually signed

H.R. 38 is not a small bill, and it's not symbolic. It says a person who can legally carry a concealed handgun in their home state may carry it in any other state, regardless of that state's rules.

Gun Owners of America counts 29 states with permitless or "constitutional" carry. In those states, "permitted" means "an adult who bought a gun" — no class, no live-fire test, no sheriff's review. Indiana is one of them, because of the law Shreve campaigned on repealing.

The nation's largest police union has been asking Congress to kill this bill, because it also strips officers of a workable way to check whether the person in front of them is carrying legally.

Shreve didn't just vote for it when it came up. He put his name on it before he had unpacked his office.

The pattern is the point

There are two honest ways to change your mind in public. You can say you were wrong, and explain what changed. Or you can stick with the unpopular position and lose.

Shreve did neither. He never publicly renounced the 2023 plan — the NRA said so at the time, and we found no statement since. He simply stopped mentioning it, moved to a district where the old position was a liability, and took the opposite one on day one.

That's why this matters beyond guns. The question every voter in Indiana's 6th District should be asking is not "what does Jefferson Shreve believe about the Second Amendment?" It's "what would Jefferson Shreve have to believe for his current district to keep electing him?" — because on the available evidence, that's the same question.

Ask him what he'd do if the district changed again. Then check the ads.

Source

The NRA Political Victory Fund's 2024 alert to Indiana 6th District members, and the Indianapolis Business Journal's July 13, 2023 report on Shreve's crime plan. Photo: official congressional portrait.