The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) tried to designate its Eight District Police Station in the French Quarter as a school in an effort to make the famous Louisiana area and the home of Marti Gras a “gun-free zone.” After the NOPD received pushback from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and a threat of a lawsuit by Gun Owners of America (GOA), the NOPD backed down and removed their “no gun” signs, but the Department has not given up its dream of making the French Quarter “gun-free.”
According to NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, the Police Department, a vocational-technical school, and Attorney General Murrill’s office have come to an agreement that would make the Eight District Police Station a “satellite campus” for the unnamed vocational-technical school. This designation would mean that guns would be banned in the French Quarter.
“Then you definitely have a vocational school located in the French Quarter, and that would be an agreed approach, by my understanding, that the attorney general would be comfortable with,” Kirkpatrick said.
AG Murrill claims to be a Second Amendment supporter, so the decision to work with the NOPD and the vocational school to create a gun-free zone confused many gun rights activists in the Big Easy. AmmoLand News reached out to the AG’s office for comment. The AG’s press secretary, Lester Duhé, denied that any type of agreement had been reached in the meetings. Although he did admit that the parties met, he says the AG’s Office just informed the NOPD about the law.
“The only reason this came to light was that Attorney General Murrill immediately voiced her concerns,” Duhé told AmmoLand News. “There wasn’t an ‘agreement.’ The Attorney General told them the law. There are statutes that allow for school zones if a real school actually exists. They would have to follow the law.”
Louisiana state law states that anywhere within a 1000-foot radius of a school is a “gun free” zone. The Eight District Police Station is in the heart of the French Quarter. The goal of putting a school inside the police station is to exploit the law and ban guns from the French Quarter.
Louisiana recently passed permitless carry, something that NOPD Superintendent Kirkpatrick was openly against, claiming that it would lead to more violence. However, currently available statistics do not back up the Superintendent’s concerns. With over half the states now having a form of permitless carry, the statistics do not show any uptick in gun violence.
Many in the gun rights world point to the NOPD decision to try to designate the Eight District Police Station as a school as an example of the dangers of laws preventing guns within a certain distance from a school. They point out how such laws can be weaponized to infringe on the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. Superintendent Kirkpatrick is open about exploiting the law for political purposes, which serves only to highlight the gun rights group’s concerns.
The school has not been opened yet, but when it does, gun rights groups are expected to sue to shut the exploitation of the “school zone loophole.”
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
If it’s only open to police cadets or other civil servants, then it is not a vo-tec school. It’s an academy. If the LA AG let’s this slide, then she’s not as strong supporter of 2A as her office would claim.
Criminals On the Prowl cop criminals to the core many need to be arrested and jailed under title 18 241 and 242 ,hope trump gets a ag that will start jailing the vermin
The 1,000 feet “gun free” radius is a holdover from a Bush 41 law that was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It is nonsense as school shooters ignore this law, just as criminals ignore all laws. It is also impractical and unenforceable. People with guns in their vehicles drive by schools all the time within 1,000 feet. Parents with guns in their cars pickup their children in the school parking lots. This latest ploy by a leftist, socialist, statis government is a monument to the absurdity of government micromanagement.
ARTICLE I. DECLARATION OF RIGHTS – State of Louisiana 11. Right to Keep and Bear Arms Section 11. The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.Amended by Acts 2012, No. 874, §1, approved November 6, 2012, eff. December 10, 2012. So what do they do? Well the first thing they do when we get into “office” by hook or crook is we violate their oath to the US Constitution and the Louisiana Constitution which for all intents makes them CRIMINALS.… Read more »
Another oath violator. So rare…oh wait.
liberals have become leftists and leftists have become progressives. even jfk would not be allowed in today’s democratic party. their words sound like they would do no harm but their actions have become unconstitutional and deadly. how else can someone who swore an oath to the Constitution and Bill of Rights work as hard as they can to take away those rights afforded to us by our founding fathers who lived through a time such as this? they, the progs, don’t care about the rule of law, only their tyrannical desires. we would almost be better off without police like… Read more »
$10 says that people wii STILL get shot there.
“Louisiana recently passed permitless carry, something that NOPD Superintendent Kirkpatrick was openly against, claiming that it would lead to more violence.” I realize the left doesn’t have much, if any, but simple common sense tells us there would be little to no increase in violence with the passage of Constitutional carry. Criminals have always carried – and will always carry – their firearms whenever and wherever they desire, so there is no increase in criminal activity to be realized in that activity. “I can’t go within 1000 feet of that school because I’m packin’.”, said no criminal ever. Constitutional carry… Read more »
Gun Free Zone=shooting range for criminals-
Doesn’t matter if it’s 10 feet the bad guys don’t care about your stupid laws-
Electric signs to advertise gun free zones is quite spiffy. New Orleans must have some wonderful liberals there.