NEW ORLEANS — A police station in New Orleans’ French Quarter is being designated as a vocational school, effectively banning gun ownership in the area, including a stretch of bar-lined Bourbon Street, as a new Louisiana law goes into effect that eliminates the need for permits to carry concealed weapons.
Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick announced the measure during a press conference Monday at the 8th Precinct police station on Royal Street in the borough.
State law prohibits carrying concealed weapons within 1,000 feet (305 meters) of such a facility, Kirkpatrick said. That radius from the station will cover a large swath of the neighborhood, including several blocks of Bourbon Street.
Kirkpatrick said the station has a classroom and is used for training. She described the station as a “satellite” of the city’s police academy.
“I wouldn’t call it a workaround,” District Attorney Jason Williams told reporters gathered in the lobby of the two-story, 19th-century building. “It’s using laws that have always been on the books to address a real and present threat to public safety.”
Designating the 8th Precinct police station as a school would give officers more authority to stop and frisk people suspected of illegally carrying weapons in the neighborhood, Kirkpatrick said.
She also mentioned other aspects of state law that allow for the arrest of someone carrying a gun in the tourist area. They include bans on carrying a gun in a bar or by anyone with a blood alcohol content of 0.05%. That’s less than the 0.08% that is considered evidence of intoxication in drunken driving cases.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed legislation to make Louisiana one of the last states to eliminate a permit requirement to carry a concealed firearm. Previous attempts to do so were vetoed by former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. But new Republican Gov. Jeff Landry supported and signed the new law into law.
According to the National Council of State Legislatures, twenty-eight other states have similar laws.
Lawmakers rejected repeated requests from police and city officials to exempt New Orleans entirely or to exempt the French Quarter and other areas known for alcohol-fueled festivities. Their refusal left city officials scrambling to find ways to address the potential proliferation of guns in high-traffic areas, said Council Speaker Helena Moreno.
“We finally realized, ‘You know what? What we need is a school,’” Moreno said.
Kirkpatrick said that while the law goes into effect statewide on Thursday, it won’t go into effect in New Orleans until Aug. 1, when an existing city ordinance on firearms expires.