Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Lighter Gun Restrictions Coming to a National Park Near You

By Mike Lillis
Tuesday, February 09, 2010 at 1:27 pm

When Congress passed new consumer protections for credit card holders last May, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) successfully attached a not-at-all-related amendment allowing firearms in national parks, so long as gun carriers comply with laws of the state in which the park is located. That law is now scheduled to take effect on Feb. 22.

In preview, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees has released examples of some of the activities soon to be permitted under the new statute.

In Wyoming’s Yellowstone Park, for example, backcountry hikers will be free to openly carry firearms. At Virginia’s Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, concertgoers — including those picnicking on the lawn — will have the same opportunity. In Alaska’s Denali and Colorado’s Mesa Verde parks, handguns in holsters might soon be in fashion. Visitors to Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg National Park — a popular field-trip destination for the area’s public schools — will be able to carry rifles across those battlefields. The list goes on.

For it’s part, CNPSR opposes the changes, citing the heightened risk for rangers and the increased likelihood that wildlife — as well as natural and historical monuments — will become irresistible targets.

“A feeling of safety and security will be replaced by wariness and suspicion,” Bill Wade, chair of CNPSR’s executive council and former head of Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, said in a statement. “This diminishes some of the ‘specialness and reverence’ our citizens have long accorded to their national parks.”

Too bad for Wade that his voice doesn’t carry quite so far on Capitol Hill as that of the National Rifle Association.

Comments

21 Comments

John Hardin
Comment posted February 9, 2010 @ 3:02 pm

The idea that peaceable, lawful firearms owners will suddenly become unjustifiably and unlawfully violent simply by crossing an invisible line – the park boundary – is ludicrous. Those who are carrying firearms lawfully outside parks today aren't engaging in widespread acts of violent crime as they do so; why do you think they will suddenly start doing so when they enter parks while carrying firearms lawfully?

The feeling of safety and security in parks is precisely that – a _feeling_. Before this law passed there was nothing effectively preventing a violent criminal carrying a firearm into a park to commit a crime of violence, just the possibility that a Ranger _might_ be close enough to interfere. Now at least, law abiding citizens will have an opportunity to defend themselves against such criminals.

Every time expanded firearms carry laws are proposed – _every_ time – those who fear firearms express the same shrill “blood in the streets” fears. And _every_ time they are proven to be without basis. This will be no different.

vabelle
Comment posted February 9, 2010 @ 3:03 pm

“A feeling of safety and security will be replaced by wariness and suspicion,”

If that happens, fewer people will come to the parks. Eventually, it'll be possible to close the parks as *national* parks (it won't be feasible or sensible to maintain them, with so few visitors) and open them as privately run amusement parks, oil fields, whatever. Mission Accomplished.

John Hardin
Comment posted February 9, 2010 @ 6:47 pm

That's… simply amazing. Characterizing the restoration of a basic individual right as the machinations of wealthy private parties engaging in a grab of public park lands for profit.

It sounds like you have Spinal Tap brand insanity, vabelle – it goes to eleven.

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JMK
Comment posted February 10, 2010 @ 9:17 am

You naysayers are fools, unintelligent people. Decent people walk among you every day carrying s concealed weapons at the grocery store, bank, gas station, restaurant etc without any problems and all without your unintelligent closed-minded fool self knowing about it. My right to protect me and mine does not end at some imaginary line drawn by unintelligent closed-minded people like you. Before you make uninteligent and unrealistic comments try checking the facts.

Alex Hepler
Comment posted February 10, 2010 @ 10:13 am

So, the rule in our local National Parks becomes the same as it is in every county in Washington State.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95XvGODAheU

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