New Orleans Gun Seizures Allegedly 'Creating More Victims'
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
September 14, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - Few people objected when police began gathering firearms they found in abandoned New Orleans homes, to prevent them from falling into the hands of criminals. But one gun policy expert says confiscating guns from law abiding citizens who remain in the city is increasing the danger posed by criminals.
New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III explained Sept. 9 that the impending mandatory evacuation of the city was truly mandatory, this time, and that residents had to leave for their own safety.
"Individuals are at risk of dying," Compass told The New York Times. "There's nothing more important than the preservation of human life."
But many residents, whose neighborhoods were undamaged by either Hurricane Katrina or the resulting flooding, do not want to leave. Most fear looters will damage or destroy anything they cannot steal and some of those citizens have armed themselves.
New Orleans police and law enforcement officers from hundreds of other agencies assisting them found hundreds of firearms left behind by residents fleeing the hurricane who probably expected to return to their homes, and their guns, within a few days. The search for the abandoned guns began after criminals fired on police and U.S. Army and Coast Guard rescue helicopters.
City officials then announced that they would, at some point, begin forcibly removing residents who refused to leave the city. Compass explained that the gun confiscation order had also been expanded to include weapons possessed by law abiding citizens, even those with valid, state-issued concealed weapons permits.
"No one will be able to be armed," Compass told the Washington Post. "Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns."
John Lott, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws," told Cybercast News Service that he is "very disappointed" with the decision by New Orleans leaders.
"The question is, 'Are the police there able to protect people?' And I think he would have to be one of the first to acknowledge that the police simply aren't capable of protecting the people who are there," Lott said. "One thing that this hurricane has shown is that people are ultimately forced to protect themselves. It would be nice if the police were available to go and protect everybody, but they're not."
Police were forced, Lott said, to choose between rescuing hurricane survivors and enforcing the law. The necessary choice, he believes, left unarmed residents defenseless.
"They just weren't able to do both and many people were falling victim to criminals," Lott argued, "You had roving gangs going around and it's not really clear what else you would have advised someone to do other than having a gun for protection."
Lott said he is also disappointed that police appear to be engaging in "selective" gun confiscation. After Compass expanded the original order, the New York Times reported that it, "apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property."
Police officials would not respond to reporters' questions about allowing the guards, who are private citizens with firearms training similar to concealed weapons permit holders, to keep their guns.
"They seem selective in ways that are a little bit hard to fathom in terms of who they let have a gun," Lott said, adding that many wealthy individuals were also apparently being allowed to keep their firearms. "Lots of people who live in the poorest areas there probably needed the most protection."
Lott said the police are "running a real risk" by taking away the only protection some New Orleans residents have from criminals.
"There are obviously bad people there who have guns. But, to take away the guns from the law abiding citizens - so that they can't protect themselves from those same people that the police are worried about - I don't think makes much sense," Lott concluded. "You're going to end up creating more victims and easier targets for criminals to attack."
Second Amendment advocates blast New Orleans policy
A number of pro-gun groups blasted the gun confiscations as "unconstitutional," "illegal" and, even, "the sin of arrogance."
Alan Gottlieb, of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), is demanding a federal investigation of the actions.
"I also want to know under just what authority New Orleans officials are confiscating lawfully-owned firearms from law-abiding citizens," Gottlieb said in a press statement. "Where does it say that the state and federal Constitutions can be nullified, even briefly, simply because of a hurricane? In every other natural disaster this country has ever faced, people retain their civil rights, including the right of self-defense, but New Orleans and Louisiana state officials have added the sin of arrogance to incompetence and negligence for which they must be held accountable when this is over."
Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners of America, explained his disagreement with the policy by recounting the story of New Orleans resident Charlie Hackett.
"[H]e and his neighbor, John Carolan, stood guard over their homes to ward off looters who, rummaging through the neighborhoods, were smashing windows and ransacking stores," Pratt wrote.
"It was pandemonium for a couple of nights," Pratt recalled from Hackett's description of the incident. "We just felt that when they got done with the stores, they'd come to the homes," Hackett told Pratt.
According to Pratt, armed looters did target Carolan's house, demanding his generator, but departed when Carolan showed them that he was armed.
Pratt recalled the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when scores of businesses were burned by protesters angry over the acquittal of police officers accused of beating Rodney King.
"But not everybody in Los Angeles suffered. In some of the hot spots, Korean merchants were able to successfully protect their stores with semi-automatic firearms," Pratt said. "In areas where armed citizens banded together for self-protection, their businesses were spared while others (which were left unprotected) burned to the ground."
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), said the civil disorder in New Orleans is "exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves.
"When law enforcement isn't available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others -- the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said in a media release. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned."
Louisiana law allows officials to "regulate possession" of firearms during a declared emergency, but the NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, argued that "regulation" and "confiscation" were not the same in the eyes of the law.
"Authorities are using that statute to do what the looters and criminals could not," Cox added, which is to "disarm the law-abiding citizens of New Orleans trying to protect their homes and families."
All three organizations said they were pursuing legal options to stop the confiscations and force the city to return firearms to any citizen who had not violated the law when their gun was taken.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050914a.html
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
September 14, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - Few people objected when police began gathering firearms they found in abandoned New Orleans homes, to prevent them from falling into the hands of criminals. But one gun policy expert says confiscating guns from law abiding citizens who remain in the city is increasing the danger posed by criminals.
New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III explained Sept. 9 that the impending mandatory evacuation of the city was truly mandatory, this time, and that residents had to leave for their own safety.
"Individuals are at risk of dying," Compass told The New York Times. "There's nothing more important than the preservation of human life."
But many residents, whose neighborhoods were undamaged by either Hurricane Katrina or the resulting flooding, do not want to leave. Most fear looters will damage or destroy anything they cannot steal and some of those citizens have armed themselves.
New Orleans police and law enforcement officers from hundreds of other agencies assisting them found hundreds of firearms left behind by residents fleeing the hurricane who probably expected to return to their homes, and their guns, within a few days. The search for the abandoned guns began after criminals fired on police and U.S. Army and Coast Guard rescue helicopters.
City officials then announced that they would, at some point, begin forcibly removing residents who refused to leave the city. Compass explained that the gun confiscation order had also been expanded to include weapons possessed by law abiding citizens, even those with valid, state-issued concealed weapons permits.
"No one will be able to be armed," Compass told the Washington Post. "Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns."
John Lott, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws," told Cybercast News Service that he is "very disappointed" with the decision by New Orleans leaders.
"The question is, 'Are the police there able to protect people?' And I think he would have to be one of the first to acknowledge that the police simply aren't capable of protecting the people who are there," Lott said. "One thing that this hurricane has shown is that people are ultimately forced to protect themselves. It would be nice if the police were available to go and protect everybody, but they're not."
Police were forced, Lott said, to choose between rescuing hurricane survivors and enforcing the law. The necessary choice, he believes, left unarmed residents defenseless.
"They just weren't able to do both and many people were falling victim to criminals," Lott argued, "You had roving gangs going around and it's not really clear what else you would have advised someone to do other than having a gun for protection."
Lott said he is also disappointed that police appear to be engaging in "selective" gun confiscation. After Compass expanded the original order, the New York Times reported that it, "apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property."
Police officials would not respond to reporters' questions about allowing the guards, who are private citizens with firearms training similar to concealed weapons permit holders, to keep their guns.
"They seem selective in ways that are a little bit hard to fathom in terms of who they let have a gun," Lott said, adding that many wealthy individuals were also apparently being allowed to keep their firearms. "Lots of people who live in the poorest areas there probably needed the most protection."
Lott said the police are "running a real risk" by taking away the only protection some New Orleans residents have from criminals.
"There are obviously bad people there who have guns. But, to take away the guns from the law abiding citizens - so that they can't protect themselves from those same people that the police are worried about - I don't think makes much sense," Lott concluded. "You're going to end up creating more victims and easier targets for criminals to attack."
Second Amendment advocates blast New Orleans policy
A number of pro-gun groups blasted the gun confiscations as "unconstitutional," "illegal" and, even, "the sin of arrogance."
Alan Gottlieb, of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), is demanding a federal investigation of the actions.
"I also want to know under just what authority New Orleans officials are confiscating lawfully-owned firearms from law-abiding citizens," Gottlieb said in a press statement. "Where does it say that the state and federal Constitutions can be nullified, even briefly, simply because of a hurricane? In every other natural disaster this country has ever faced, people retain their civil rights, including the right of self-defense, but New Orleans and Louisiana state officials have added the sin of arrogance to incompetence and negligence for which they must be held accountable when this is over."
Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners of America, explained his disagreement with the policy by recounting the story of New Orleans resident Charlie Hackett.
"[H]e and his neighbor, John Carolan, stood guard over their homes to ward off looters who, rummaging through the neighborhoods, were smashing windows and ransacking stores," Pratt wrote.
"It was pandemonium for a couple of nights," Pratt recalled from Hackett's description of the incident. "We just felt that when they got done with the stores, they'd come to the homes," Hackett told Pratt.
According to Pratt, armed looters did target Carolan's house, demanding his generator, but departed when Carolan showed them that he was armed.
Pratt recalled the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when scores of businesses were burned by protesters angry over the acquittal of police officers accused of beating Rodney King.
"But not everybody in Los Angeles suffered. In some of the hot spots, Korean merchants were able to successfully protect their stores with semi-automatic firearms," Pratt said. "In areas where armed citizens banded together for self-protection, their businesses were spared while others (which were left unprotected) burned to the ground."
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), said the civil disorder in New Orleans is "exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves.
"When law enforcement isn't available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others -- the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said in a media release. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned."
Louisiana law allows officials to "regulate possession" of firearms during a declared emergency, but the NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, argued that "regulation" and "confiscation" were not the same in the eyes of the law.
"Authorities are using that statute to do what the looters and criminals could not," Cox added, which is to "disarm the law-abiding citizens of New Orleans trying to protect their homes and families."
All three organizations said they were pursuing legal options to stop the confiscations and force the city to return firearms to any citizen who had not violated the law when their gun was taken.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050914a.html
