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Last night I brought you news of Indiana State Rep. Jim Lucas (R) who was meeting in a corridor of the state capitol with some high school students who came to talk about out of control gun violence and their fears of being gunned down while in algebra class. The video I linked in that post shows the moment he flashed them his loaded pistol to convince them that guns are actually totally awesome. His point seemed to be: guns aren’t scary. You don’t think I’m gonna shoot you right now, do you?
I’ve taken a crash course in Lucasian studies overnight and from what I’ve learned it’s hard to believe Lucas hasn’t yet made the jump to Congress to join the House GOP conference.
As you might expect, Lucas appears to have a long history of posting what a local NBC affiliate in 2020 rather charitably called “racially controversial social media posts.” In that case it was a new meme he’d made with a photo of black children over the text “We gon’ get free money!”
In the wake of that controversy he explained that he “was bored last night and made several memes on imgflip.com, essentially mocking our government and it’s overstepping it’s (sic) authority.”
As one does, Lucas later felt compelled to meet with the local leader of the Bartholemew County NAACP, as he put it, “to listen and to teach.” But he told a local reporter that he would still have to keep it real because he “refuse[d] to live [his] life walking on egg shells.”
Of course that’s not all. There was the time in 2022 some whiners got in a lather about Lucas sharing a Joseph Goebbels quote on Facebook. He also caught some flak in 2022 for questioning whether the Uvalde school shooting might be a false flag attack to take away Americans’ gun rights. A year before that he got in hot water when he had a racially controversial exchange about slavery on Facebook with a black surgeon from Texas and began quizzing Dr. James Carson about whether he’d ever gotten “any scholarships or financial assistance because of your skin color.”
But Lucas doesn’t stick to your standard conspiracies and racist memes thing, though. Indeed, it may have made sense for those kids to run for cover when Lucas showed them his gun because he appears to be a bit of a freak, even apart from racist Facebook memes.
Based on an incident just last May, Lucas also does a kind of feral wingnut performance art, really for the ages. Where to start?
Let’s start here: Back in May there was a drunk driving incident. But I’m not sure that really quite captures it. I struggled with how to explain the story because most news accounts unfold the details as police found them, slowly unwrapping how on earth this all happened. But it’s helpful to understand precisely what Lucas had been up to before they arrived, just to put everything in context.
Here’s what the police investigation found …
“Lucas was driving south on State Road 11 when he left the road, traveled down a large hill and hit the guardrail, pushing it into the right lane of I-65 north. Lucas then allegedly kept driving across all three lanes of I-65 north and struck the median guardrail. Then, after doing a U-turn and driving the wrong way on the entrance ramp, Lucas drove almost three miles before parking his truck behind the carpet business.”
Got that?
Police got a report that someone was driving a van the wrong way on an on-ramp and went to investigate. When they arrive at the on-ramp they find no car but various wreckage and detritus from Lucas’s sojourn noted in the report. Later they come upon a highly damaged but apparently abandoned vehicle, which is actually missing at least two tires. Like it’s just the metal wheel.
Then they come upon Jim Lucas and ask him, reasonably enough, if this is his van.
Nope, says Lucas. Just out here for a walk.
The verbatim dialog is something.
O: “You’re just out for a walk?”
J: “Yes”
O: “You didn’t see a van go by with no tires on it?”
J: “No van.”
O: “I mean you’ve been drinking that’s why I am asking you because we have somebody apparently driving around with no tires on a van and then we got you stumbling around out here.”
J: “I have no van”
O: “Hang tight Jim.”
This actually leaves out some of the best moments, which you can see here. But you get the idea.
A bit later Jim puts up his hands and mentions that he has a firearm and a knife on him, which officers then recover.
After telling police he doesn’t want to talk he mentions that he’s also got another loaded gun in the center console of his van. “Nothing illegal just want to let you guys know,” Lucas says.
With a deadpan that should send the man straight to Hollywood the officer replies, “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything illegal, that would be shocking.”
So that’s our boy Jim.
He somehow managed to avoid jail time for this with a plea deal, despite the DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. He somehow managed to get off probation early too. Indiana papers are still trying to figure that one out.
As I’ve said, I don’t know how Lucas isn’t in Congress yet, or more specifically in the Freedom Caucus. The state house district he represents is in Indiana’s 9th congressional district, which is currently represented by freshman Rep. Erin Houchin (R), who joined the Main Street Caucus and has generally positioned herself as a more pragmatic, kinder, less insane style of Republican. But there’s been a decent amount of turnover in the district over the last couple decades so Lucas’s chance may be coming.