When the Super Bowl kicks off at New Orleans’s Caesars Superdome on February 9, football fans won’t be allowed to bring coolers into the nearby French Quarter for fear they could be hiding explosives. Guns, however? Those they can carry freely, both openly and concealed.
Last summer, Louisiana enacted a law allowing anyone 18 and older to carry a gun without a permit or training. Local officials scrambled to find a legislative solution that would keep firearms out of the boozy French Quarter, but they failed, adding New Orleans to a growing list of cities hamstrung by state legislatures hostile to gun regulation.
The stakes intensified on February 4 with the news that President Donald Trump, who survived an assassination attempt in July, will be attending the Super Bowl to watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles. While guns remain banned inside the stadium, Louisiana’s new permitless carry law means police in the surrounding area can no longer check people’s permits to see if they are legally armed.
“The job of law enforcement has never been harder,” said Lindsay Nichols, policy director at the gun reform group Giffords. “They don’t know what their job is anymore if they’re not given the ability to keep people safe.”
Violence associated with the Super Bowl has happened before. Last year, in Kansas City, Missouri, a mass shooting left one person dead and 21 others injured at a post-Super Bowl parade celebrating the Chiefs’ win.
While Louisiana lawmakers were considering the permitless carry legislation last spring, Democrats tried to secure a carveout so permits would still be required in the French Quarter, but they were rebuffed by Republicans amid objections from the National Rifle Association. So in July, a month before permitless carry was to take effect in New Orleans, the police superintendent joined with the City Council president and the district attorney to announce a unique workaround.
A police station in the French Quarter would be designated as a vocational-technical school, which would host classroom training for the police academy. The designation meant that a 1,000-foot radius around the station would be a gun-free zone. Per state law, guns cannot be carried near schools.
The zone would have included the stretch of Bourbon Street where a man later plowed his truck through a crowd, killing 14 people, on New Year’s Day. The perpetrator opened fire and injured two officers before police fatally shot him.
A scenario like that — bullets fired through a densely packed crowd — is exactly what local leaders had been trying to prevent. “Guns and crowds don’t mix,” New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams said at a July press conference announcing the gun-free zone. “Guns and alcohol don’t mix. Don’t bring your gun to the French Quarter.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill took issue with the plan. “You cannot just ‘designate’ yourself a vo-tech school,” she said. But if “a real school” were erected, the gun-free zone could stay.
The city prepared an application to establish the school, but seven months later, the plan is stalled, creating an impasse that threatens lives, according to local leaders and advocates.
Security plans for the Super Bowl include stepped-up patrols and SWAT teams for tactical response, and the addition of 300 members of the Louisiana National Guard and Louisiana State Police.
Caleb Webb, an operations manager at a hotel in the Central Business District just south of the French Quarter, said he grew up around guns and doesn’t think a gun-free zone would make much difference during the Super Bowl. But he is grateful for the enhanced security presence — even if it makes for a jarring visual. “It shouldn’t be like this,” he told The Trace. “Nowhere in America should it be normal that you see a group of like three to four soldiers in fatigues with a long rifle on every corner of the street.”
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislation Action, the group’s lobbying arm, said in a statement that the New Year’s Day attack proved that “those hell-bent on committing harm will find a way to do so.”
“Disarming law-abiding gun owners is never the answer,” Commerford said. “Criminals can strike anywhere, and peaceable Americans should not be left defenseless.”
During a February 5 news conference, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick sought to remind people that it is still illegal to bring guns into businesses serving alcohol. “People would be extremely unwise to bring a firearm into a hospitality area, the French Quarter primarily,” she said. “Don’t do it.”
Some Cities Are Restricted From Enacting Gun Laws
New Orleans can’t pass its own law banning guns. That’s because Louisiana is one of 45 states with firearm preemption statutes that prevent cities from enforcing gun laws stronger than those passed at the state level.
That includes every state in the South, where gun violence is the highest and where legislatures are most resistant to gun restrictions.
Local leaders try to find workarounds. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette last year erected signs prohibiting guns near its downtown science museum since it was designated school property. But it only lasted a couple of weeks. The university backed off after being threatened with a lawsuit from Gun Owners of America, a group to the right of the NRA.
In September, a year after Alabama enacted permitless carry, Montgomery Mayor Steve Reed signed an ordinance requiring a photo ID to carry a concealed firearm. The state attorney general said the change violated the state’s preemption law. The ordinance stayed on the books for four months but was never enforced before it was repealed in January.
The job of law enforcement has never been harder. They don’t know what their job is anymore if they’re not given the ability to keep people safe.
Lindsay Nichols, policy director at Giffords
Critics say that having specific measures for local jurisdictions will not make a difference. “Restricting firearms will do nothing to make people safer around the French Quarter,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America. “Criminals, who by definition ignore laws, aren’t affected by restrictions on carrying firearms — so permitless carry will have no effect on what criminals do.”
The tension between blue cities and red state legislatures has bred frustration and resentment. “Many of these cities really are suffering from gun violence, and there are only a small number of limited things that the local governments are allowed to do,” said Nichols, the Giffords policy director. “Preemption does really hinder their ability to take action to protect their communities.”
When a state is receptive to gun regulation, a city can serve as a testing ground for policies before they become state laws. In 2007, Sacramento, California’s capital, enacted a requirement for ammunition sellers to transmit information about each of their buyers to police. Officers could then check the buyers against a database of prohibited gun purchasers, leading to dozens of illegal gun seizures. A statewide data-sharing requirement, passed by the California Legislature in 2019, resulted from the success of the Sacramento program, Nichols said.
New Orleans Still Grappling With Permitless Carry
City leaders in New Orleans knew they were unlikely to get a permitless carry carveout, given the state’s dominion over gun laws. But after getting rebuffed at the Legislature, “we weren’t going to sit on our hands,” Moreno, the City Council president, said last year. Moreno, who is running for mayor, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The New Orleans Police Department said that the French Quarter gun-free zone plan is at a standstill. “While we have advocated for a carve out for the entertainment district under the constitutional carry law, those efforts have not been successful,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our focus now is ensuring that officers are prepared to respond swiftly and effectively protect the safety of our residents and visitors.”
Asked how officers will deal with potential threats in the French Quarter during the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras next month, the spokesperson said: “Nothing has changed with regard to permitless carry. The New Orleans Police Department will continue to follow the laws of our state and enforce them accordingly. We remain steadfast in our commitment to public safety.”
New Orleans has recorded a significant dropoff in arrests for legal possession since permitless carry took effect. From January to July of last year, police made 46 such arrests per month. The rest of the year saw fewer than 20 arrests total.
The city still has some tools to keep the French Quarter gun-free. The permitless carry law prohibits negligent carry, which includes brandishing a gun. Police have made several arrests on that basis since permitless carry took effect. Gun carry is prohibited for formerly incarcerated people and anyone with a blood alcohol content of 0.05. Concealed guns are also banned at demonstrations and parades.
The situation in the raucous French Quarter has taken on a new sense of urgency since the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street.
“We worry that when there is a shot fired, several shots fired, because of the density of these crowds, you have the possibility for many people to get injured or killed,” Moreno, the City Council president, told reporters last summer.
