BELLEVUE, WA — The Second Amendment Foundation today warned New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell against suspending or limiting the sale of firearms and ammunition under her recently proclaimed State of Emergency due to Covid-19.
Under provisions of her proclamation, the “Emergency Authority” is empowered, if necessary, “to suspend or limit the sale, dispensing or transporting alcoholic beverages, firearms, explosives, and combustibles.”
But SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb is telling Mayor Cantrell, “Wait a minute!”
“Following Hurricane Katrina, we sued the city when then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration began confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens for no good reason. The federal court ordered the city to cease confiscations.
“We sued New Orleans then, and we’ll do it again,” Gottlieb vowed. “The presence of a nasty disease does not suspend any part of the Bill of Rights, no matter what some municipal, state or even federal politician may think.
“While we certainly recognize the seriousness of this virus and its ability to spread rapidly,” he continued, “treating Covid-19 and taking steps to prevent it from infecting more people has nothing at all to do with the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
“People legally licensed to carry should not have their right to do so suddenly curtailed because some politician panicked,” Gottlieb observed. “We didn’t allow it before, and we’re not going to allow it now.”
