In the weeks and months before Louisiana’s Constitutional Carry law took effect on July 4th, critics proclaimed the new law would wreak havoc on the state; particularly in New Orleans, where officials tried to turn most of the French Quarter and downtown business district into a semi-gun-free zone where concealed carry licenses would still be required for folks to lawfully carry.
Those plans haven’t panned out, and for now, visitors and residents are still free to carry a concealed firearm without a state-issued permit, so long as they’re legally allowed to own one. So has the new law led to anarchy in the Crescent City?
Not according to the city’s crime stats.
New Orleans police have seized fewer guns and made fewer illegal gun possession arrests this year compared to last, leading experts to question the impact of Louisiana’s permitless carry law.
According to the NOPD’s most recent crime report, illegal gun possession arrests have dropped by 42% and officers have confiscated 1,788 firearms in criminal investigations, a 21% decrease.
Criminologist Ashraf Esmail, Ph.D., from Dillard University, says the decrease is partly due to a new state law allowing residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit or prior training.
“Police are now limited to stop anyone suspected of a gun because permitting concealment is no longer necessary,” Ashraf Esmail, Ph.D. said.
Esmail says the law restricts how the NOPD can make arrests and take guns off the street.
“The use of guns have to visible for law enforcement to do something about it and that could lead to even more gun violence,” he said.
At first glance, the stats might indicate that Esmail is right. Fewer guns are being confiscated and fewer people are being arrested for illegally carrying a gun since the permitless carry law took effect. But is that because of the new law, or because fewer crimes are being committed to begin with?
However, University Medical Center emergency room doctor Annelies De Wulf says as of now, crime is on a decline just like gun seizures.
“I think that mirrors what we see in terms of gun violence and homicide numbers also precipitously dropping,” De Wulf said.
The NOPD reports violent crime is down 24%, meaning less shootings and homicides compared to this time last year.
Violent crime is down substantially, and homicides have declined even more. According to crime analyst Jeff Asher’s Year-to-Date Homicide Dashboard, homicides in New Orleans are down by more than 40% compared to last year.
That’s not necessarily because of Constitutional Carry, but it’s pretty clear that the new law hasn’t led to an explosion of violent crime as critics predicted.
De Wulf credits a collaborative effort between local and state agencies who are committed to helping crime victims and educating communities about crime.
One of those programs is UMC’s Seeds of NOLA Trauma Recovery Center, which De Wulf helps run. She says her staff partners with community organizers to reach out to people in need, address root causes of crime, and has directly helped 180 victims of gun violence this year.
“Our team is actively de-escalating conflict while talking to people’s intense responses after injury,” she said.
De Wulf obviously has a vested interest in promoting her program. I have no idea how effective those efforts have been at preventing initial or retaliatory acts of violence, but it stands to reason that strategies focusing on the relatively small number of New Orleans residents who are most likely to commit violent crimes are going to be far more useful than casting a wide net of gun restrictions over everyone in the hopes of ensnaring violent criminals along with lawful gun owners.
Granted, Constitutional Carry has only been in place for a few months in New Orleans, and homicides were already trending down this year before permitless carry took effect. But there’s no indication that those trends changed once Constitutional Carry became the law of the land in Louisiana either. New Orleans is on pace for one of it’s biggest one-year crime declines in its history; fantastic news for its citizens, and yet more evidence that Constitutional Carry isn’t the invitation to anarchy the anti-gunners proclaim it to be.
