Contrary to what you may have heard, the New Orleans Police Department was not completely ineffective in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It turns out that they were pretty good at confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens who owned their guns legally (and could be counted on to hand them over without a struggle).

A Second Amendment group calls it a “stunning reversal.” After denying it for months, the City of New Orleans on Wednesday admitted that it does have a stockpile of firearms seized from private citizens in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

The city even took lawyers to the place where some 1,000 firearms are being stored.

….

“We’re almost in disbelief,” said Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb on Wednesday. “For months, the city has maintained it did not have any guns in its possession that had been taken from people following the hurricane. Now our attorneys have seen the proof that New Orleans was less than honest with the court.”

Under an agreement with the court, the hearing on the contempt motion has been delayed for two weeks, and during that time, the city reportedly will set up a process to return the guns to their lawful owners.

“Remember New Orleans” is now the rallying cry of the National Rifle Association’s Wayne La Pierre, naturally enough. It boggles the mind that at a time when government at all levels was failing to fulfill its most basic duty to keep order, that police officers would consider it time well spent to thumb through their registry of legal gun owners, go knocking on their doors and go stripping them of their ability to defend themselves, and their capacity for some peace of mind. Because the greatest value of owning a gun in a situation like that is clearly not so that you can go around shooting people, but so that you know that you are not helpless–that you don’t have to cower and fear the emboldened criminals who might come to your door, and so that you know you can protect yourself, your family and your home if worst comes to worst.

The fact that the city of New Orleans’ only apparent success after Katrina was in taking that peace of mind away from their law-abiding citizens (something which they denied until the force of legal action prevailed) is only the crowning shame for what has clearly been one of the worst governed cities in America.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Lawyers, guns and money
• New Orleans Blues
• Guns again