We reported recently how New Orleans attempted to skirt the state’s new constitutional carry law by declaring a police station in the popular French Quarter to be a “school,” which would effectively ban legal carry in the immediate area, which included a stretch of Bourbon Street.
Now, the city of Lafayette, Louisiana, appears to be trying a similar tactic. On August 21, Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Monique Boulet announced that the Lafayette Police Department will enforce a 1,000-foot firearm-free school zone around the Lafayette Science Museum.
Earlier, the University of Louisiana Lafayette declared the science museum downtown, along with contracted private hotels used for student housing, to be “school property” in order to create more firearm-free zones across the city and avoid the recently passed constitutional carry law. While the university operates the museum, the city of Lafayette owns the building. However, Mayor Boulet has deferred to the university’s declaration that the museum is part of its campus and, thus, a firearm-free zone.
“We are going to enforce [the 1,000-foot gun-free zone] because it is a school,” Boulet said. “[ULPD] is not going to enforce the law on the street; they don’t have jurisdiction over Jefferson Street around the Science Museum,” says Boulet. “The reality is, if it’s a school, that’s the law, [Lafayette Police Department] is supposed to enforce the law.”
The Lafayette situation, like the earlier attempt to scuttle carry in New Orleans, didn’t sit well with Republican State Sen. Blake Miguez, who authored the constitutional carry bill that passed the legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry. Sen. Miguez has sent a letter to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill asking her office to weigh in on the Lafayette situation.
“As Louisiana Constitution Article 1, Section 11 subjects any restriction on the right of a citizen to keep and bear arms to strict scrutiny, it is paramount that this question should be resolved to produce the least amount of governmental interference in the lawful exercise of a civil right by the resident of this state,” Miguez stated in the letter. “Otherwise, situations could arise where a school might assert that its ‘campus’ is anywhere school business takes place, even if the location has no other connection to the school.”
Miquez then mentioned several potential scenarios that schools could try to use to infringe on the right of Louisianans to carry a firearm for self-defense.
“Foreseeable instances of this could be a privately owned field where LSU conducts an anthropological dig, a convention center rented by Tulane to host a scientific conference, or a golf course where the university president regularly plays with potential donors,” Miguez wrote. “In each of these situations, the ‘business’ of a school is being conducted off campus by the choice of the school representatives in the same manner as ULL is choosing to conduct some of its business operations, including hosting limited selected classes, at the Lafayette Science Museum outside of the purview of the CEA.”
AG Murrill has already made a statement on the gun-free zones in Lafayette. But Miguez is looking for an official AG opinion on the situation.
“The law on Gun-Free School Zones is narrow,” Murrill said after the mayor’s announcement. “The Lafayette Science Museum downtown does not fall under it.”
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