Major cities tend to favor gun control. People figure they don’t need a gun because they can just call the police. In many cases, that works. After all, larger police departments tend to have the kind of manpower were help can be just a few minutes away.

That doesn’t help if seconds count, but in New Orleans, it seems even if they don’t, you’re still screwed.

It is one of the most startling crime stats to emerge in recent months: It takes New Orleans police an average of 2½ hours to respond to a 9-1-1 call, according to a new analysis presented to the City Council on Wednesday.

That figure, calculated by the data firm AH Datalytics and presented to the council’s criminal justice committee, was determined after looking at response times for all calls — including low-priority incidents, like fender-benders or stolen cars where residents are in little danger.

The New Orleans Police Department immediately took issue with how data analyst Jeff Asher crunched the numbers, asserting that residents should focus instead on the department’s response times for emergencies, which police get to largely within minutes.

Low-priority calls are often placed at the end of long backlogs, driving up the overall average.

The problem is that what can start as a low-priority call can become a high-priority call pretty quickly. And, of course, if you’ve already been marked down as low-priority, no one is coming faster unless you can make yet another call to 9-1-1.

At least some on the city council agree.

City Council members said the situation is a crisis that demands immediate action from City Hall.

“We’re just done with the talk,” said Council President Helena Moreno. “We just have to be really honest and say that potentially, people’s lives could be at stake.”

The problem is that the New Orleans Police Department is having a manpower problem. They simply don’t have enough officers on the job to put them on the streets.

It doesn’t help that funding for law enforcement was cut in 2021 to the tune of $15 million.

Earlier this year, the police union president cited progressive politicians as the reason still more officers are leaving the city, some for lower-paying positions. After all, why work to make arrests when the bad guy is going to just end up back on the streets in no time flat?

All of this brings me to point to this as why gun rights matter.

We cannot trust the police to save us. Even if Uvalde hadn’t happened, this would be a big warning sign that maybe, just maybe, the police won’t instantly respond to your 9-1-1 call, the same call you’re counting on to keep you safe from that bump in the dark.

But if you have a gun, you have the means to protect yourself. It doesn’t matter if it takes the police two and a half hours to finally get to your door because you’ll still be alive to open it for them.

Remember that even in the best of cities, you can only count on the police to get there in time to draw a chalk outline around the body. It’s your gun rights that give you the ability to make sure the body in question isn’t yours. It’s not a difficult decision to make