The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) tried to designate its Eight District Police Station in the French Quarter as a school in an effort to make the famous Louisiana area and the home of Marti Gras a “gun-free zone.” After the NOPD received pushback from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and a threat of a lawsuit by Gun Owners of America (GOA), the NOPD backed down and removed their “no gun” signs, but the Department has not given up its dream of making the French Quarter “gun-free.”

According to NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, the Police Department, a vocational-technical school, and Attorney General Murrill’s office have come to an agreement that would make the Eight District Police Station a “satellite campus” for the unnamed vocational-technical school. This designation would mean that guns would be banned in the French Quarter.

“Then you definitely have a vocational school located in the French Quarter, and that would be an agreed approach, by my understanding, that the attorney general would be comfortable with,” Kirkpatrick said.

AG Murrill claims to be a Second Amendment supporter, so the decision to work with the NOPD and the vocational school to create a gun-free zone confused many gun rights activists in the Big Easy. AmmoLand News reached out to the AG’s office for comment. The AG’s press secretary, Lester Duhé, denied that any type of agreement had been reached in the meetings. Although he did admit that the parties met, he says the AG’s Office just informed the NOPD about the law.

“The only reason this came to light was that Attorney General Murrill immediately voiced her concerns,” Duhé told AmmoLand News. “There wasn’t an ‘agreement.’ The Attorney General told them the law. There are statutes that allow for school zones if a real school actually exists. They would have to follow the law.”

Louisiana state law states that anywhere within a 1000-foot radius of a school is a “gun free” zone. The Eight District Police Station is in the heart of the French Quarter. The goal of putting a school inside the police station is to exploit the law and ban guns from the French Quarter.

Louisiana recently passed permitless carry, something that NOPD Superintendent Kirkpatrick was openly against, claiming that it would lead to more violence. However, currently available statistics do not back up the Superintendent’s concerns. With over half the states now having a form of permitless carry, the statistics do not show any uptick in gun violence.

Many in the gun rights world point to the NOPD decision to try to designate the Eight District Police Station as a school as an example of the dangers of laws preventing guns within a certain distance from a school. They point out how such laws can be weaponized to infringe on the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. Superintendent Kirkpatrick is open about exploiting the law for political purposes, which serves only to highlight the gun rights group’s concerns.

The school has not been opened yet, but when it does, gun rights groups are expected to sue to shut the exploitation of the “school zone loophole.”

About John Crump

John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.