The piper ALWAYS has to be paid

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 5 -- A young woman shot to death in her home Friday morning became at least the seventh New Orleans homicide victim of the new year.

The victim, whose identity was not released, was said to be in her early 20s. Her house in the Uptown section of New Orleans had been ransacked; police did not know whether anything had been taken.

Five of the shootings, all unrelated, occurred within a 14-hour span Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Also, a body with signs of physical trauma was found Wednesday wrapped in a rug. That death has not been classified.

The spate of killings dashed hopes that the city's police chief was right on New Year's Day when he said he believed the violence that has plagued parts of the city for months had been brought under control.

History lesson: In the aftermath of Katrina The mayor and the chief of police sent the NOPD, those who had not run away, joined the looters and who really existed (rather than just existed on paper so that corrupt officials could pocket their pay), out to confiscate the firearms of legally armed citizens.

When questioned about this they denied it and when ordered to give the illegally seized guns back by a federal judge they have dragged their feet.

They have claimed all sorts of procedural and practical reasons why they can't return the property which they stole, but the real reason is sample.

The city itself no longer has control of the stolen guns. They were divided up among the police who actually did the stealing. Every one of the firearms is now in the collection of a New Orleans cop, or one of the cops from other areas who came to the area to help out. Or in the collection of some corrupt (is there any other kind?) New Orleans politician who had a friend on the force. Or they have been sold to a gun store or pawn ship or transferred to some criminal gang that pays NOPD protection. Even the cheap "Saturday night special" junk guns have some dollar value or are useful to corrupt police as "throw downs".

What New Orleans is going through now is the inevitable result of a corrupt political/police culture, a judicial system steeped in the politically correct idea of the criminal as victim of society, a large minority population which has always had the government there to take care of them, and therefore never had to learn responsibility and self reliance, and a civilian population which has now been rendered defenseless in a very public way.

Under those circumstances crime and violence could not do anything but skyrocket!

If Ray "School Bus" Nagin and his police chief want to turn the situation in the Crescent City around there is one way to do it. Go on TV and encourage the honest citizens to arm themselves. Open the police range for civilian practice and declare "open season on criminals".

Do this and New Orleans will become a model of law and order. Fail to do this and deep ordering the body bags.