Another Louisiana City Tries To Avoid Constitutional Carry

We reported just lately how New Orleans tried to skirt the state’s new constitutional carry regulation by declaring a police station within the widespread French Quarter to be a “faculty,” which might successfully ban authorized carry within the speedy space, which included a stretch of Bourbon Road.

Now, town of Lafayette, Louisiana, seems to be making an attempt an analogous tactic. On August 21, Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Monique Boulet introduced that the Lafayette Police Division will implement a 1,000-foot firearm-free faculty zone across the Lafayette Science Museum.

Earlier, the College of Louisiana Lafayette declared the science museum downtown, together with contracted personal motels used for scholar housing, to be “faculty property” with a purpose to create extra firearm-free zones throughout town and keep away from the just lately handed constitutional carry regulation. Whereas the college operates the museum, town of Lafayette owns the constructing. Nevertheless, Mayor Boulet has deferred to the college’s declaration that the museum is a part of its campus and, thus, a firearm-free zone.

“We’re going to implement [the 1,000-foot gun-free zone] as a result of it’s a faculty,” Boulet mentioned. “[ULPD] just isn’t going to implement the regulation on the road; they don’t have jurisdiction over Jefferson Road across the Science Museum,” says Boulet. “The truth is, if it’s a faculty, that’s the regulation, [Lafayette Police Department] is meant to implement the regulation.” 

The Lafayette state of affairs, like the sooner try and scuttle carry in New Orleans, didn’t sit properly with Republican State Sen. Blake Miguez, who authored the constitutional carry invoice that handed the legislature and was signed into regulation by Gov. Jeff Landry. Sen. Miguez has despatched a letter to Louisiana Lawyer Common Liz Murrill asking her workplace to weigh in on the Lafayette state of affairs.

“As Louisiana Structure Article 1, Part 11 topics any restriction on the appropriate of a citizen to maintain and bear arms to strict scrutiny, it’s paramount that this query needs to be resolved to supply the least quantity of governmental interference within the lawful train of a civil proper by the resident of this state,” Miguez said within the letter. “In any other case, conditions may come up the place a faculty may assert that its ‘campus’ is wherever faculty enterprise takes place, even when the situation has no different connection to the college.”

Miquez then talked about a number of potential situations that faculties may attempt to use to infringe on the appropriate of Louisianans to hold a firearm for self-defense.

“Foreseeable situations of this could possibly be a privately owned area the place LSU conducts an anthropological dig, a conference heart rented by Tulane to host a scientific convention, or a golf course the place the college president often performs with potential donors,” Miguez wrote. “In every of those conditions, the ‘enterprise’ of a faculty is being carried out off campus by the selection of the college representatives in the identical method as ULL is selecting to conduct a few of its enterprise operations, together with internet hosting restricted chosen lessons, on the Lafayette Science Museum outdoors of the purview of the CEA.”

AG Murrill has already made a press release on the gun-free zones in Lafayette. However Miguez is on the lookout for an official AG opinion on the state of affairs.

“The regulation on Gun-Free Faculty Zones is slender,” Murrill mentioned after the mayor’s announcement. “The Lafayette Science Museum downtown doesn’t fall below it.”