Indiana has been a prime target of gun-control advocates for its loose firearms laws. By the same token, it’s been a favorite of the Second Amendment lobby, which maintains government should not be about disarming law-abiding citizens.

Now, it seems, we can forget about the “law-abiding.”

A Star Watch investigation, reported Sunday, found hundreds of cases in which permits to carry guns were issued to persons whose backgrounds allowed, or even required, denial on the basis of better-safe-than-sorry.

A sampling from Indiana’s two most populous counties, the probe turned up men with records of actual and alleged violence who received passes to pack heat from Indiana State Police — sometimes over objections from local police.

State Police say it’s not a huge deal — not a flawed system, but one with “things we can improve on.” When even the National Rifle Association, at least indirectly, is nervous about the system, perhaps there is indeed room for improvement.

The NRA agrees that “behavioral” restrictions on gun possession are a good idea. Bad guys forfeiting rights, in other words. Indiana law goes along with that, but enforcement often doesn’t.

As The Star’s report showed, “good character and reputation” are required for a carry permit; but State Police have not turned down a request on that basis since at least the 1980s.

Felons are forbidden to carry handguns under state and federal laws; yet violence-related felonies often are recast as misdemeanors under alternative-sentencing plans, leaving the permit door open.

Felony or not, state law says a person should not get a permit if there is “reasonable belief” of a “propensity for violence.” This did not stop men with long criminal histories, as identified by The Star, from obtaining carry permits.

A key problem for the authorities is one the Star Watch team likewise encountered: lack of an up-to-date, electronic, integrated record-keeping system linking the state and the 92 counties. (Marion and Lake counties offered The Star a glimpse because they do have accessible records.) In many cases, State Police issue permits to the wrong people because they simply don’t know their histories.

Local police, according to State Police, rarely forward records. A procedural change in that area certainly is called for. A necessary but far more arduous reform, affecting far more than the gun issue, is records modernization. But no systemic measure will quell the danger posed by undeserving people with pistols in their pockets until our protectors shift the benefit of the doubt to the public.