More than three years after Louisiana passed a law aimed at getting guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, victim advocates say only the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office has systemically taken on the job of following through on that mandate.
In the rest of the state, advocates say little has changed, despite the law on the books that bans people with protective orders against them or those convicted of certain domestic abuse charges from possessing guns. The problem, they said, seems to be that despite prohibiting gun ownership for these offenders, the Louisiana Legislature never set up a system to ensure the firearm is surrendered or taken away.
In Lafourche Parish, a small division of the Sheriff's Office actually started looking at this problem even before Louisiana acted in 2014, relying on an older federal law that says many people with domestic violence convictions — even some convicted of misdemeanors — can't possess a gun.
