The New Orleans Police Department home invasion and gun confiscation program began last Thursday. According to Louisiana law, emergency orders, such as those "regulating and controlling" firearms, automatically expire after five days. So today, the sixth day after the confiscations began, the legal authority for the confiscations has expired. Legally speaking, victims of the confiscation ought to be able to retrieve their firearms today.

But of course the above paragraph, describing the law in Louisiana, has nothing to do with what is actually occurring. As detailed in previous postings on this weblog, the lawless Police Superintendent Eddie Compass never created, in any form, a public order to authorize the gun confiscation. Nor are there any reports that the "order" (if it ever existed) has been renewed for another five-day period, as the law allows.

Let us hypothetically assume that the confisications were legal in the first place (under theory that confiscations are a form of "controlling" guns, which is allowed, but do not constitute "prohibiting" guns, which is not allowed). And let us further assume that the Superintendent's remark to a reporter constitutes creation of a lawful order (even though none of the statutory procedures for creating a lawful order were followed). Even then, the absence of a renewal order today means that the gun confiscations must cease, and that victims of the confiscation have every legal right to reclaim their property.