Taking personal safety in hand.

In areas hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, lawlessness was rampant. Looters were unabashedly robbing businesses and houses, taking advantage of the fact that most police, the ones who hadn't quit the job altogether, were busy helping with rescue and relief efforts. The people who were not being victimized were those who were armed and watching out for themselves.

Although the government abandoned honest New Orleans' citizens in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, leaving them to defend themselves, it is now seizing firearms from citizens, without regard to individuals' rights or personal needs.

Be Armed or Be Victimized

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, Nanette Clark and her friend Jayne Davis were at Clark's house to move furniture upstairs in case the house flooded. On Tuesday night following the storm, they were on the second story balcony when they were forced to shoot at looters to dissuade them from having their way, according to the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer.

Likewise, in New Orleans, several young men brandishing a knife and a machete demanded John Carolyn's portable generator. He scared them off by shooting over their heads with a pistol. Carolyn told the New York Times, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."

Down the street from Carolyn, reports Canada.com, stood Charlie Hackett. He is a Vietnam veteran, and he, like Carolyn, decided to watch over the neighborhood. He maintained a vigil each night holding his 12-gauge shotgun. He said that it's not hard to stay awake while on guard duty. Each night he heard gunshots and people walking through. (His neighborhood was largely not flooded.) He said that the nights were "black, black, black" and that they reminded him of Dac To in Vietnam.

Also in New Orleans, Paul Cosmos carried more than one gun while guarding his auto repair shop as "a steady trickle of looters came and went" from nearby businesses, according to the New York Times.

Realizations & Frustration

Law-abiding citizens who were arming themselves in the aftermath of Katrina weren't glory-seeking vigilantes; they were people who realistically assessed the situation confronting them. Several days after Katrina blew through, police were just beginning to try to reestablish control in New Orleans, sending in heavily armed officers to deal with the roaming thugs, but the police weren't getting to the outskirts of the city, and people there were fending for themselves. They had seen the looting; they had met the groups of thugs; and as the Gazette-Times (Corvallis, Ore.) states, they had heard the stories "of police cars being shot at and of hotwired school buses backing up and emptying houses of all their possessions."

In the Algiers Point neighborhood, Peter Vazquez, a restaurant owner who was found barbecuing lamb on the grill outside his home, acknowledged the reality of the situation: "Oh, you've got to carry." Vazquez had a pistol in his pocket and a shotgun ready inside the house. Also in the same neighborhood, Ed Land started carrying a pistol and told a story of yet another man on "the next street over" who was forced to shoot at three individuals. He hit one of them, who is presumed dead.

A shotgun-toting neighbor of Land's put up a sign that pointedly summed up the situation in the area and expressed the frustration felt by all of them. It said, in part: "Looters Will Be Shot."

Dash for Safety

Just as police mustered all of the firepower that they could carry to protect themselves when they entered New Orleans after the hurricane, people who were leaving the city armed themselves as best they could.

Stephen DeFerrari narrated to the Boston Herald the details of his escape from the city. After a day that saw him use his shotgun to warn off a prospective canoe thief, DeFerrari was on his porch in the pitch black night, still armed, and he could hear "people breaking into houses right around the corner." He knew it was time to go. He said, "The people were just going crazy." Making two trips in his canoe, DeFerrari ferried people and dogs and cats over a mile to dry ground.

On one trip, DeFerrari and his passengers passed a mall and learned that looters had ransacked the place and then set it on fire. When the police tried to intervene, the looters shot at them and drove them away. The people being carried to safety saw multiple fires and noticed people looting, and DeFerrari tried to stay away from them to stay safe. Once on dry land, they used a rented S.U.V. to drive to Baton Rouge.

Rhonda Mandel of Fort Myers, Florida, also found herself in an area surrounded by looters and looking for a way out. She was in New Orleans to drop off her son at Tulane University. When the storm started building strength and heading for Louisiana, her son went with his new college roommate to Baton Rouge, and she planned to stay in New Orleans at the Marriot hotel until her flight left on Sunday. Then the airlines canceled her flight, and she was stuck.

Initially, though there was massive destruction outside, the hotel was still providing meals, but things deteriorated quickly. When word came to evacuate, 17 keys were found in valet parking for 17 abandoned vehicles, and hotel workers and guests decided to drive out. (The French Quarter where she was staying is on relatively high ground, making this possible.) Because looters were everywhere and the area was unsafe, the people in the convoy armed themselves--even Mandel, who hates guns. At first, she refused a pistol that was offered to her, but then the driver of her vehicle asked, "What are you going to do when they shoot me?"

She took the gun and took a brief course in firing the pistol, and they drove out. In Baton Rouge, she finally got a flight home.

Healthy Skepticism

Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, and it is only about 75 miles away from New Orleans, and evacuees flocked to its relative safety--and that's precisely what has its residents worried.

A New York Times article on September 6 indicated that though the city's populace of about 227,000 had taken in about 100,000 refugees and that most churches were housing and feeding groups of them, residents were uneasy about their new guests. Rumors had circulated widely about burgeoning crime. Whether or not the rumors that were being spread were true, the folks from Baton Rouge knew that crime was much more pervasive in New Orleans than it was in Baton Rouge. Mr. Searle, a Baton Rouge resident, said, "They put up with the crime in New Orleans, and now it's staring them in the face, but up here that's not going to be tolerated. People are going to handle it individually if they have to. This is the South. We will take care of it."

To be ready, they began arming themselves. Jim's Firearms, a large sporting goods store, had lines three and a half hours long as people waited to buy guns. Jeanine Smallwood, another local person, commented that the city's residents were not being motivated by mindless fear. She said, "People are, what's the word? Not frustrated, not scared, it's more like their lives are on hold, everything's changed and we're trying to figure out what the new normal is going to be." And for many in Baton Rouge, that means keeping a gun on hand--just in case.