SAF, NRA settle joint lawsuit over New Orleans gun seizures
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

It took three years of perseverance, but the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA) have finally settled their landmark federal lawsuit against the city of New Orleans over the post-Hurricane Katrina gun confiscations.

The September 2005 legal action has resulted in a permanent injunction against the city, prohibiting the confiscation of all lawfully-possessed firearms from all citizens. Attorney Dan Holliday of Baton Rouge, who represented the plaintiffs along with Virginia attorney Stephen Halbrook, told Gun Week that the agreement has eliminated a requirement that people whose guns were taken had to prove ownership by producing a sales receipt or provide a serial number of the gun.

Now, he said, gunowners need only provide a driver’s license or some other form of identification, and the make, model and caliber of their firearm and sign an affidavit. If the gun had special identifying characteristics, that would also be provided. The claimant must then sign for the gun and go through a background check to confirm they can now legally own a gun.

“Proof of ownership by sales receipt or serial number is encouraged,” the agreement states, “bur neither the presentation of the serial number of the firearm nor the presentation of a sales receipt will be required in order for a claimant to obtain possession of his/her firearm.”

The agreement gives the city 30 days to notify all gunowners they can identify, via mail, to come and retrieve their property.

For months after the lawsuit was filed, the city denied having seized any guns. However, attorneys and investigators working for NRA and SAF uncovered ample evidence that such confiscations had occurred. At one point, a former city attorney met Halbrook and Holliday at the federal courthouse, acknowledged some guns had been taken, and then led the two attorneys to a storage area where they estimated more than 1,000 firearms had been put inside trailers and containers.

Halbrook suggested that the city finally consented to the settlement because a trial date was looming and “it was time for them to face reality.”

“They could no longer deny the undeniable,” Halbrook observed. “It hit them that they were finally going to have to admit what they’d done.”

SAF founder Alan Gottlieb told Gun Week that he was “delighted that this case is now settled,” but he complained that the lawsuit “should never have been necessary.”

He recalled that when he first got word of the confiscations, SAF was prepared to take legal action on its own, but that the group teamed up with NRA, which also was infuriated by the gun grab. It was a landmark action, with two national gun rights organizations marching into court together to quickly secure a temporary restraining order against the city and neighboring St. Tammany Parish. Officials in St. Tammany Parish quickly settled and returned guns their officers had seized.

Barely two months later, SAF and NRA teamed up again in a lawsuit that led to a victory over a handgun ban in San Francisco. That case was a virtual replay of a legal action SAF fought on its own more than 22 years ago when then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein had pushed through a gun ban in the city.

New Orleans, under Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley, seemed at first to ignore the lawsuit and then balk at it. Neither official has ever taken responsibility for issuing the order that all privately-held firearms would be confiscated and that “only police would be allowed to have guns.”

“When a disaster strikes,” Gottlieb said, “no government entity or official should arbitrarily decide that citizens must be disarmed and left defenseless, and that is what happened in New Orleans. These gun seizures were conducted without legal authority, under color of law and often at gunpoint, and that must never be allowed to happen again anywhere on American soil.”

The NRA produced a video account of the Hurricane Katrina gun confiscation, and at least one book, The Great New Orleans Gun Grab by Gordon Hutchinson, has become something of a cult classic among outraged gunowners.

“What happened in the days after Hurricane Katrina was an outrage,” Gottlieb said. “We hope this permanent injunction sends a signal to mayors and police chiefs everywhere that we live in a nation of laws, and those laws are not subject to their whims. You do not suspend Constitutional rights just because of a storm or earthquake or some other natural or man-made disaster.”

Several states have adopted statutes that forbid gun confiscation in the wake of such a disaster.

“This is not simply a victory for SAF or NRA members in New Orleans, but for all American gunowners,” Gottlieb said.

Are there any other requirements, like a police record to exist of what was taken from where? If not:

"They seized 10 Remington 870's caliber 12ga, 10 Winchester 94's in 30-30, 7 Glock 19's in 9mm, and 4 Garands, 30-06"

Unfortunately no, there appears to be no requirement that they even correctly identify the weapon. They can misspell, they can assume something that looks vaguely like something is that something (say mistaking a high end AK variant for an SKS . . . but your VEPR's serial number doesn't match any of the SKS's we have in lock up so we can't give you back your gun)