How to Keep Guns Off Bourbon Street? Designate a Police Station as a School

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A police station in New Orleans’ French Quarter will be designated a vocational technical school in a move that will instantly outlaw gun possession in the surrounding area — including a stretch of bar-lined Bourbon Street — as a new Louisiana law eliminating the need for concealed carry firearm permits takes effect.

Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick announced the measure at a Monday news conference at the 8th District police station on the Quarter’s Royal Street.

State law forbids carrying concealed weapons within 1,000 feet (305 meters) of such a facility, Kirkpatrick said. That radius from the station will cover a large section of the Quarter, including several blocks of Bourbon Street.

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Kirkpatrick said the station includes 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 work-around,” 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 deal with a real and current threat to public safety.”

Designating the 8th District station a school is just one way of giving police officers more leeway to stop and search people suspected of illegally carrying a weapon in the Quarter, Kirkpatrick said.

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She also listed other facets of state law that could allow the arrest of someone carrying a weapon in the tourist district. They include bans on carrying a gun in a bar or by anyone with a blood-alcohol level of .05%. That’s less than the .08% considered proof of intoxication in drunk-driving cases.

State lawmakers earlier this year passed legislation to make Louisiana one of the latest states to do away with a permit requirement for carrying a concealed handgun. Past efforts to do so were vetoed by former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. But the new Republican governor, Jeff Landry, supported and signed the new law.

Twenty-eight other states have similar laws, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

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Lawmakers rejected repeated pleas from police and city officials to exempt New Orleans entirely or to carve out the French Quarter and other areas well-known for alcohol-fueled revelry. Their refusal set city officials to work finding ways to deal with a possible proliferation of guns in high-traffic areas, said City Council President Helena Moreno.

“Ultimately what we realized was, ‘You know what? What we need is a school,’” Moreno said.

Kirkpatrick said that although the law takes effect statewide on Thursday, it won’t be enforced in New Orleans until Aug. 1, when an existing city firearms ordinance expires.

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