After meeting last week with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, New Orleans officials quietly removed the 1,000-foot gun-free zone they had established illegally smack dab in the middle of the city’s popular French Quarter.

“I had a productive meeting with NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick and District Attorney Jason Williams, and Councilwoman Helena Moreno on Thursday in which I shared my concerns. They are working on a solution that would comply with the law,” Murrill said in a short statement following the meeting.

What Murrill told city officials is not exactly known. She is in Milwaukee this week attending the Republican National Convention and is unavailable for comment, according to her spokesman, Lester Duhé, who added that the Attorney General will always defend Louisianans’ Second Amendment rights.

A story published last week revealed how city officials redesignated their Eighth District police station – which is located in the middle of the French Quarter – as a vocational technical school, so that everything within a 1,000-foot radius of the new “school” became a gun-free zone, including more than five blocks of Bourbon Street.

Who will actually attend classes at the new “school” was not specified. New Orleans Police recruits are trained at the police academy, which is located at a different facility. However, city and police officials claimed some of the recruits would take at least one class in a small room at the new “vo-tech.” No classes were planned for civilian students.

Threat Continues

Dan Zelenka, board member of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and president of the Louisiana Shooting Association, was among the first to notice that officials removed the French Quarter gun-free zone from the city’s online zoning map.

“The zoning map, which had been modified July 1 to add the French Quarter gun-free zone, was changed for a second time in 10 days. They removed the school zone they had placed there on July 1,” Zelenka said. “Whatever happened in her meeting, they changed the map, which is important. The map is a requirement to prosecute under the school zone.”

Zelenka and the Louisiana Shooting Association are not dropping their guard. He has heard that the city is considering partnering with an actual school, which they would host at the Eighth District police station.

“If they do that, we might have a problem,” Zelenka said. “If they partner with an actual school and that actual school holds classes there, that might be upheld as a school zone – notice the word might.”

New Orleans has a history of infringing upon the Second Amendment.

New Orleans Police officers aggressively target concealed carriers, including tourists, and after Hurricane Katrina devasted large portions of the city, NOPD officers went door-to-door confiscating legally owned firearms from city residents – a clear violation of the Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The threat, Zelenka said, is far from over.

“It is a very Democratic anti-gun council, mayor and police department, so it will never be done. I can promise you they are likely to try to legislate something next year. They will probably attempt another go around. We don’t think the issue will ever be over,” he said. “This will be an ongoing issue because frankly they just want to stop and frisk people in the French Quarter.”

This story courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support the project.

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25 COMMENTS

  1. One more time: New Orleans is a toilet/cesspool and it is best that POTG avoid the place.
    The powers that be have no respect for good citizens and they think all people are merely crooks waiting on an opportunity to do a crime.

    • I don’t vacation in Nola for the same reason I don’t go swimming in a sewer treatment holding “pond.”

  2. Someone was speaking in a ‘Gun Free Zone’ last Saturday afternoon. That same ‘Zone’ was bristling with ‘Enforcement’ and they didn’t stop swine scat (after the fact doesn’t count).

  3. Only a crazy right-wing extremist fascist wouldn’t let a local authority figure deny citizens their rights within an arbitrarily defined geographic zone!!!!!

    • Perpetrators of the 1910’s thru 1940’s belong to the socialists (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engles doctrine). Someone needs a history lesson on the number of presidents attacked by leftest-commies; Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy (both), Reagan, Ford, now Trump.

  5. “No classes were planned for civilian students.”

    Correction, as law enforcement are civilians too. If you are not in the military, you are a civilian. This includes law enforcement.

    Carry on.

    • dictionary definition:

      “civilian
      /sĭ-vĭl′yən/

      noun

      ● A person who is not an active member of the military, the police, or a belligerent group in a conflict.

      ● A person who is not an employee of the government.

      ● A specialist in Roman or civil law.”

    • Not. The police ATE the standing army our Founders warned us about. Until they are stripped of qualified immunity and are also subject to the same gun laws and restrictions that real civilians are subject to every day ypur BS rings pretty hollow.

  6. How does the school zone/1000’/gun-free zone law work? Many people live, walk, work or drive within 1000′ of a school. Is doing this while legally in possession of a firearm a crime?

      • I am awaiting on a response from the Attorney General’s office to determine if 14:95.2 is still current law. I can find no reference to 14:95.2 ever being repealed or modified.

        • Mike, Yes it does; however, C 9 is relative to those having a permit.
          Also, C: 3,4,6,7,8, is what scares the left.
          One cannot drive by schools without being in violation of the 1000′ rule which is why C: 4 and 5 are so important. As soon as I hear from the A G I will post their response.

          • Mike, I failed to include C: 2
            “(2) (2) A school official or employee acting during the normal course of his employment or a student acting under the direction of such school official or employee. or a student acting under the direction of such school official or employee.”
            This echoes screams of horror by the left since teachers are a part of “(2) A school official or employee acting during the normal course of his employment or a student acting under the direction of such school official or employee.”

  7. And yet the NOPD lets known criminals carry and when caught carrying or in commission of a crime, the DA generally lets them go.

  8. And yet the NOPD lets known criminals carry and when caught carrying or in commission of a crime, the DA generally lets them go.

  9. As I said, the former AG is now Gov. and the new AG is in camp with the Gov. therefore the school scheme wasn’t ever going to fly.

  11. Look, I always said I would get some disease and bow out. I got Covid again. This is a pandemic of the unvaxinated. This is the fault of the MAGA Republicans who aren’t getting enough vaxcines. You can’t build a wall high enough to keep out a vaxine. True story! Look, there is no federal solution to Covid. This gets solved at a state level.

  12. Look, I always said I would get some disease and bow out. I got Covid again. This is a pandemic of the unvaxinated.

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