"Only law
enforcement are allowed to have weapons"
New Orleans demonstrates the downside of
emergency powers laws
By David Astin - Research Director
“No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons.”
By now, nearly every gun owner in America knows that this kind of statement is no longer limited to Communist China or Castro’s Cuba. This decree was pronounced by New Orleans Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley barely more than a week after Hurricane Katrina had destroyed the city’s infrastructure.
Looters and thugs roamed the streets while hundreds of New Orleans police officers fled the city. Some threw their badges out the windows of their cars as they sped away. Others actually participated in the looting.
While there were many officers who acted honorably -- apprehending dangerous thugs even while grieving the loss of their own family members -- most residents were forced to fend for themselves. Many did so successfully with their own firearms.
They did so, that is, until New Orleans Police Commissioner Edwin Compass III issued the order that “only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.”
Legal Firearms Seized in Door-to-Door Searches
On September 8, ABC News began showing police and National Guard troops going house-to-house, searching for residents, and confiscating guns. Fox News aired footage of police body-slamming an elderly woman against a wall in her own home and confiscating her self-defense handgun.
The victims of disarmament were clearly not thugs or looters, but decent residents who simply wanted to protect their lives and property.
Could it Happen in South Dakota?
For those who said it could never happen in America, New Orleans was a rude awakening. The reality is that many states have laws on the books that allow firearms confiscation during an emergency.
In the wake of 9/11, the South Dakota Legislature moved to pass sweeping changes to the emergency powers laws. This dramatic increase in governmental power posed a threat to the right to arms and highlighted problems in the current law.
South Dakota Gun Owners was the only gun rights group to oppose this power grab as SDGO members from all over the state registered their protest. Because of their immediate response, the worst section of the new law was defeated.
Over the next two years, SDGO continued fighting almost single-handedly to weed out other provisions in the state’s emergency powers laws that would allow over-zealous officials to confiscate firearms and other private property.
Thanks to the outcry raised by SDGO members and supporters, “emergency” firearms confiscation is no longer legal in this state.
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom
This victory doesn’t mean that it could never happen in South Dakota, however. Louisiana’s laws governing emergencies do not explicitly grant the power to seize firearms. But that didn’t stop gun grabbers like Commissioner Compass and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin.
While it may be hard to imagine that any official in this state would take such a widely unpopular action, gun owners in South Dakota must remain vigilant.
Liberty will endure only so long as citizens remain willing to hold their government accountable to the Constitution.