Legislation allowing people to carry a concealed weapon without a permit passed in Louisiana, which had WWL's Newell Normand wondering: would you trust the emotional intelligence of the public enough to let them carry a weapon?
That question was demonstrated perfectly, Normand said, by Tammany Councilman David Cougle, who brought a concealed firearm to a council meeting after saying he had received death treats.
"He felt obligated to exercise his Second Amendment right," Normand said, explaining that Cougle walked up to deputies at the meeting and revealed that he was carrying a gun in a duffle bag even though parish ordinances and state law both prohibit carrying a concealed weapon on the premises.
Deputies told him to just keep the bag behind the dais.
But the next day, a dispute escalated about whether that should have been allowed.
The councilman felt, in his emotional state, that protecting his family should have allowed him to be able to break the law, Normand said. But Normand's listeners know he's never in favor of finding justification to break the rules.
"To say that you're not aware of these rules, I don't believe that for a second," Normand said. "You should know better as it relates to this. It's your parish ordinances that outlaw guns there... This is the classic example of somebody justifying in their mind that it's OK to do this because they are at risk. Should they be at risk? No. But the point here is that if everyone in their chamber exercised the lack of emotional intelligence that Councilman Cougle did that evening, think about the difficulties that we're going to have."
It goes back to the culture of non-compliance that Normand has railed against. "But he now put the officer in a real difficult position," he said. "The rule is the rule... We're not thinking these things through because our own safety and welfare is more important that everyone else's is ... I'm going to do what I want when I want and how I want because it's in my own best interest to do so. And that's where we are."