Firearms Confiscation in New Orleans
Disarming law-abiding and self-reliant citizens in the disaster zone? Dave Kopel writes in Reason:
At the orders of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Police, the National Guard, the Oklahoma National Guard, and U.S. Marshals have begun breaking into homes at gunpoint, confiscating their lawfully-owned firearms, and evicting the residents. “No one is allowed to be armed. We're going to take all the guns,” says P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police.
So, yes, they apparently are, and they are doing it so they can forcibly evacuate them later. Dave Kopel does not have kind words for this idea:
The good gun-owning citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas ought to be thanked for helping to save some of their city after Mayor Nagin, incoherent and weeping, had fled to Baton Rouge. Yet instead these citizens are being victimized by a new round of home invasions and looting, these ones government-organized, for the purpose of firearms confiscation.
Glenn Reynolds adds:
It's especially striking to see this at a time when New Orleans-area police have been abandoning their posts, engaging in looting, and trapping refugees in a flooding city at gunpoint. “Rely on the police to protect you” has never seemed like worse advice.
I certainly wonder if it's legal to forcibly disarm people who are clearly endangered by looters, rapists, and thugs. It certainly isn't ethical. I've heard people complain that a disaster was no reason to curtail civil rights, bo so far I don't hear a lot about this particular infringement.
Josh Poulson
Posted Saturday, Sep 10 2005 03:47 PM
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