New Orleans, Louisiana

From the Corvallis (OR) Gazette-Times of September 3, 2005

Residents of New Orleans arm themselves

Peter Vazquez is strapped.

Barbecuing lamb on a grill outside his home in New Orleans' historic Algiers Point neighborhood Friday, Vazquez flashed a 9 mm Beretta from his pants pocket and showed visitors a 12-gauge shotgun that was readily accessible in the house.

"Oh, you've got to carry,'' said Vazquez, a 40-year-old restaurant owner.

As tired and frantic New Orleans residents waited for law enforcement officials to restore order, many decided to take matters into their own hands to protect their streets and property from looting.

With stories spreading of police cars being shot at and of hot-wired school buses backing up and emptying houses of all their possessions, Vazquez and others around the city have been packing heat. A lot of it.

"I've been carrying it for the last couple of days,'' he said. He said the police have been invisible in his neighborhood; police officials have said they're vastly overwhelmed and were waiting for the National Guard help that began arriving Friday.

A feeling of helplessness prompted Ed Land, also of the Algiers Point neighborhood, to put his 9 mm automatic in a hip holster and strap it on as he cleaned up hurricane debris from his property.

"A guy in the next street over shot at three individuals — one definitely got hit,'' said Land, 51. "He thinks he killed one that died a couple of streets over.''

One of Land's neighbors walked up and down the street Thursday with a beer in one hand and a shotgun in the other. The man spray-painted a warning and a criticism on the wood he placed over one of the windows of his house to protect them from the storm: "Looters Will Be Shot. Bush Sucks. Where's FEMA?''