In the weeks and days before Louisiana’s Constitutional Carry law took effect, New Orleans officials repeatedly tried to find a carve-out that would allow them to require concealed carry permits in the downtown business district and the French Quarter. After being rebuffed by the state legislature, the city’s mayor and police chief announced in mid-July that they’d figured out a workaround: declaring an NOPD precinct building in the heart of the French Quarter a “vo-tech”, which would create a 1,000-foot bubble around the building where the state’s permitless carry law wouldn’t apply.
More than two months after they unveiled their plan, however, the “gun-free zone” has yet to materialize, and the city’s attempt to circumvent the Constitutional Carry law appears to have stalled out.
“The plan and process are still moving forward,” a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department said in a statement. “We are not currently ready to discuss the status of the process but will do so when the time is appropriate.”
The department acknowledged that it first must establish “a qualifying institution in that area. Once the school is established, the zone will be as well.”
The NOPD is “in discussions with several area institutions to both expand current partnerships and to create new ones,” the statement went on. Officials declined to specify any partners for the police station plan, however.
Locally, the city has applied for an occupational license to establish “a vocational school focused on teaching industrial public safety and managerial skills as a commercial enterprise” at the 8th District station. The city has proposed “a publicly owned but privately operated training facility,” in an application that remained last week under city review, records show.
But administrators with the Louisiana Board of Regents and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System board, which oversee adult schools in the state, say the city hasn’t approached them for any approvals.
The city of Lafayette, Louisiana and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette tried a similar approach by declaring the city’s science museum a school, but backed off the bad idea when attorneys and legislators informed them “the definition of campus may not extend to property that the University does not own.” Though the university manages the science museum, the property itself is owned by the city, and both ULL and the city of Lafayette were going to face legal challenges if they moved forward with the plan.
While New Orleans officials haven’t formally given up on their similar idea, State Rep. Blake Miguez says the legislature will be watching, and may adopt follow-up legislation that would negate the city’s efforts to get around Constitutional Carry.
The bills that passed helped buttress court decisions that have tightly limited municipalities seeking to impose their own, additional gun restrictions. Miguez, a champion sharpshooter, cited political momentum as he projected that the legislature could soon free adults to carry firearms on college campuses, or possibly reduce the zones around schools.
“The message is very clear to the locals in New Orleans that don’t necessarily respect individuals’ Second Amendment rights: that it’s going to be a losing battle,” Miguez said. “We’ll strengthen that law to close any gaps. That’s not something, if I were them, I would be wasting my time on.
“That’s the direction it’s headed. It’s not going to be going the other way, I can tell you that.”
The “gun-free zone” announced by the city wasn’t going to ban concealed carry in the Quarter anyway. It would have required those carrying a firearm to have a concealed handgun license, effectively circumventing the Constitutional Carry law, but those with valid licenses could have still carried regardless of the city’s edict.
City officials warned that the adoption of Constitutional Carry was going to turn the French Quarter into a war zone filled with drunken gun owners blasting away at each other on Bourbon Street, but that hasn’t happened. In fact, according to the latest crime stats from the New Orleans police, the city’s crime rate has fallen by 20% this year, with homicides and non-fatal shootings down more than 40% across the city.
Armed robberies have declined by 41%, carjackings have decreased by 42.5%, and the number of reported rapes and sexual assaults have dropped by 34%. Constitutional Carry may not be the only reason why the Crescent City is a safer place than it was last year, but it’s clear that the passage of permitless carry didn’t result in the anarchy and armed drunken rampages that the mayor and other officials predicted.
The city’s best bet would be to simply drop its plan to circumvent Constitutional Carry, but regardless of what officials decide I hope Miguez and his colleagues in Baton Rouge move forward with campus carry legislation next session. Not only would that hinder the anti-gun machinations of New Orleans officials, it would allow students and faculty on campuses across the state to be able to protect themselves in situations where they’re currently disarmed by statute. That would be a huge gain for Second Amendment supporters, and for public safety as well.
