« Editor's Note | Main | Kirby Puckett, RIP »
March 06, 2006
NOLA's other legacy
In September I noted a piece by David Workman that exposed unlawful, widespread firearms confiscations in New Orleans in the post-Katrina chaos, motivated by what Workman noted was the "infuriating" sentiment that, "Only law enforcement are are allowed to have weapons." I also wondered why even conservatives seemed to be ignoring the issue, and still wonder the same thing.
Today Dave Nalle reminds us what happened, and why it matters:
At the height of the chaos in New Orleans, when gangs were ravishing the city the government decided to help out. Not by protecting neighborhoods and arresting looters. Instead they went after private citizens whose only crime was trying to defend themselves and their property.
Acting under an emergency statute which had never been used before, and on the orders of the Governor and Mayor, police in New Orleans, later supported by National Guardsmen, began going house to house and confiscating privately owned firearms in direct violation of the Second Amendment, leaving honest citizens who were already without water, food, electricity and decent shelter at the mercy of looters and other criminals. All these citizens wanted to do was to defend their homes and instead having already lost everything, they lost their last freedom, the freedom to defend themselves.
...this incident remains as an object lesson to all of us in how vulnerable we are in the face of government abuse of power, and how the interests of government are not always the interests of the people.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by bill at March 6, 2006 12:15 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
