NOPD

Ok, I’m finally going to chime in on the situation in New Orleans. Step back to pre-Katrina, I am a happy middle aged person who enjoys shooting activities. I hunt, mostly birds; I shoot skeet; I shoot pistols. I have guns and I appreciate our second amendment right to bear arms for both sporting and defense uses. Personally, I feel that when the founding fathers incorporated the second amendment in the bill of rights, they were thinking more on the self defense and defense home and country than shooting geese.

Now bring us to post-Katrina, no not yet…. Bring us to pre-Houston when I lived in New Orleans. I knew some NOPD folks (many of which were happy to show you Mardi Gras pictures of topless women they kept in the trunk of their car) and I knew that many of the NOPD were thugs. No I was never harassed by them, but it was generally understood that they wouldn’t hesitate to mess you up if you needed messing up and many drunks in the French Quarters evidently did, in their eyes (or so I was told at the time).

Ok now bring us to today, I’m driving down the road and I see a local police car coming towards me, he must have thought I was a nut because as he passed I looked directly at him with what was most likely a very perplexing look. As he drove by I wondered what circumstance would permit him to break in to my house and take any guns that he might come across. What circumstance would allow him to continue searching my house (warrant-less) and disarming me while I shouted that I did not what him in my house? Or even worse, take any guns from my person in my own home. Before Katrina, I would have though that there would never be such a circumstance, but now I wonder when I see a policeman if he would ever do such a thing.

Thank you City of New Orleans, thank you planting the seed of distrust for those who are to protect us. Your police department turned in to a bunch of raving lunatics, in my opinion, breaking down unanswered doors to look for guns and taking guns from law abiding citizens while also telling them that you cannot protect them. City of New Orleans, you have done a grave disservice to your country. In a time of great peril, you failed to rise to the occasion. You failed to do the right thing. Instead you operated as a scared bunch of thugs.