Customers at a New Orleans gun shop ended a gunman’s lethal rampage when they produced their own sidearms and shot him dead.

The drama began when the as yet unidentified killed fatally shot two people at a gun store in a suburb of New Orleans.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said a person he described as the initial shooter fired inside the Jefferson Gun Outlet on Saturday afternoon in the suburb of Metairie, striking the two people who were later pronounced dead.

He said several other people then opened fire on the shooter, both inside and outside the building.

Guns and ammunition are sold in the front of the outlet and staff who work there often wear a sidearms.

Detectives are examining the possibility that the deadly shootout at Jefferson Gun Outlet may have started when a customer who carried in a pistol with an extended magazine argued with store staff who told him to unload.

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Lopinto said two other people were also hit by gunfire and were hospitalised in stable condition, adding that investigators had just begun trying to piece together who shot whom

None of the dead or wounded were immediately identified and details remained sketchy.

Lopinto said the investigation was continuing as authorities tried to determined the exact details of what happened.

Caution tape surrounded the business to keep onlookers from getting close to the scene, where ambulances and numerous law enforcement vehicles had arrived earlier.

-AAP