Gun Confiscation

 A friend of mine brought up an earlier post of mine where I touted my ideas for gun regulation.  I will restate that in my opinion, people should be able to have any gun they want.  I do believe however that it should be registered and require training and licensing. Please see my post: We don't need Gun Control May 2022.

That said - he brought upon issue of illegal confiscation of which I was not aware.  Being me, I decided to research it.  This is what I found and my opinion (post sources are listed at the end)

Claim: Guns were confiscated in the aftermath of Katrina

My friend was correct:  A confirmed 552 guns were confiscated although there is contention that there were more.

Claim: The guns confiscated were from predominantly registered gun owners.

False: It has been impossible to confirm a higher number as only 114 of the 552 reported confiscated were legally purchased.  However, allegedly, all gun owners who had guns confiscated were given receipts. There are claims of a higher number (around two thousand) presented in the 2005 lawsuit (completed in 2008), but the higher number could not be confirmed as none of those were legally held by the claimant, or they could not produce a receipt.

Claim: (not by my friend - I added this one) The guns were not returned.

Unsure how to categorize:
Allegedly, of the 552 guns confirmed to be in possession of NOLA. They would only return guns to those who possessed receipts OR could prove legal ownership.  I have to mention here that Katrina happened in Aug 2005 and the lawsuit was presented in September 2005 with the owners who could prove ownership or a receipt from the confiscation – but this did happen after a catastrophe and in my opinion a gun receipt could easily be lost by the owner considering all that was transpiring.

 

Additional background (includes my perspective)
The guns were confiscated as part of the city’s decision to begin forcibly evacuating residents who still remained in their homes and was out of a concern for the spread of disease and fires, it seems reasonable to assume that the swirling mass of disinformation, rumors, and a focus on restoring “order.” 

There was a LOT of misinformation as a result of the chaos with a background atmosphere of paranoia that resulted in NOLA’s decision to forcefully disarm the populace they’d been charged with protecting.

While obviously even one illegal confiscation from a law-abiding citizen is too many, the claim of a conspiracy between the disorganized local, state, federal, and military units and agencies is firmly in the realm of fantasy.  But it (confiscation) did still occur and there was an initial cover up. To some degree – though it appears around as fractured and unevenly applied as most other mandates that rippled through the chaos in the days and weeks following the storm.

The NRA, Gun Owners of America and Second Amendment Foundation, filed a swift lawsuit on September 23rd and a judge granted a temporary injunction against firearms confiscations for New Orleans and the surrounding areas, and ordered the confiscated firearms returned. So, none were confiscated after that date.

I also discovered that firearms confiscation wasn’t new territory for NOLA PD to begin with.  It seems this had been done on a smaller scale previously.  This lent itself to the ease with which this happened.

The suit – won in 2008 – resulted in a larger victory as the court-ordered a permanent injunction against the city of New Orleans ever confiscating legally owned firearms from its citizens again.

Additionally, George W. Bush signed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act in September of 2006, which included language that bans:

“The confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law.”

Although temporary surrender of a firearm can still be considered a precondition before entering a rescue or transport vehicle.

That being said, in retrospect Katrina appears to be the perfect storm of overall mismanagement and lack of emergency preparedness at both the state and federal levels. Add to that chaos a biased conservative media eager to ‘get the scoop’ on the situation. They then broadcast this to the entire world, and a panicked, inadequate collection of leaders and authority figures who wound up relying on hysterical stories and rumors.

Overall, the confiscation appears to be the end result of failings of the state apparatus at nearly every level rather than a shadowy and concerted effort to use a crisis as the backdrop for mass disarmament.

Sources used:

NBCnews.com

Nraila.org

Pewpewtactical.com

Gunowners.org

Nytimes.com

buckeyefirearms.org

 

I wanted to use more conventional sources but had a difficult time finding articles in those that gave me any real clarity of the situation..