Early this year, as heartache and controversy trailed the bloody New Year’s attack on Bourbon Street, New Orleans experienced a remarkable lull in the more familiar kinds of carnage, mostly by guns, that have plagued the city for decades.
In February, two people were killed in the city, the fewest of any month since 1970, according to crime analyst Jeff Asher. Murders remained in single digits in March and again in April, with seven each month.
For a city that averaged 200 murders annually over the past five years, and as recently as 2022 had recaptured the moniker of the U.S. murder capital, those respites have helped set New Orleans on a remarkable path…