Why the national park gun rule should stand
The rule doesn't change much, says this commentator, mostly just making the status quo the legal status quo. So let it be.
In early December President Bush kept his promise and came through for gun owners who supported him by loosening rules allowing loaded, concealed guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.
Now, President-elect Obama needs to keep his promise and come through for gun owners who supported him by allowing this rule to stand as currently written.
The new administrative rule goes into effect in January and applies to all 48 states that issue concealed carry permits; only Illinois and Wisconsin don’t. It replaces a regulation brought in during the Reagan administration that allowed guns in national parks, but only if they were unloaded and inaccessible.
Back on September 4, I devoted my column in New West to trying to convince park advocacy groups that fighting this rule wasn’t worth their time and money when they had much bigger fish to fry, such as securing adequate funding for the National Park Service (NPS), various park expansion plans, many serious wildlife issues, curbing the rampant fee increases, and addressing the dramatic decline in park visitation, to name a few.
But paranoia over the rule drowned out my little voice in the wilderness. The ink on the Federal Register publication of the rule had hardly dried before opponents, including the National Parks and Conservation Association and the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, started making plans to encourage the incoming administration to reverse the rule. A few days later, the New York Times joined the chorus.
The rule won’t change much, so what’s the big deal? People who feel strongly about having their guns for personal safety have been taking them into national parks for decades. Every park ranger knows it, and it has caused minimal if any crime or gun-related accidents. Think about it. Rangers at entrance stations don’t even ask park visitors if they have guns, partly because they don’t care, but mostly because Reagan’s gun rule was impractical, if not impossible, to enforce.
So, when the Bush rule hits the ground next year, the impact will be invisible. All that changes is the status quo becoming the legal status quo, and as far as I’m concerned, it should be legal. Why should taking a loaded, concealed handgun into a national park be any different than taking it into a national forest?
So, since this rule is a no big deal, I should write about something important, right?
Not quite. I have a dog in this fight.
I’m out there on the Internet with a big bet that our new president and the new, blue Congress won't pass any gun laws because they face too many global crises to worry about gun issues — and of course, they also hope to stay in power more than four years. Parting ways with some of my gun-toting readers, I’d like to keep this pro-planet administration in power long enough to institute some positive changes, so I don’t want to let a shallow issue like this new rule distract our leaders away from something important or help defeat them in 2012.
The NPS faces plenty of challenges, and I’m sure most park administrators would agree with me — off the record, of course. In fact, after that last New West column on this issue, I had a call from a park superintendent who agreed completely that the NPS has much bigger priorities. The NPS doesn’t want to deal with the gun issue and now officially (instead of realistically) doesn’t have to deal with it.
So let it be.
To date, Obama has managed to send out several signs that he isn’t sincere about his promise to gun owners that they have nothing to fear from him. His transition team still asks applicants if they own guns, his Web site, Change.gov, contains a strong, anti-gun policy statement, and his attorney general appointee, Eric Holder, has a worrisome track record on guns.
Perhaps those signs are nit picking, but they sure have the shorts of hardcore gun owners in a knot. Let’s balance it out with a positive sign and gives the gun guys some relief. An easy, quick way to do this would be refusing to reverse the new national park gun rule. The new administration has a lot to do, but here’s something big that can be done without doing anything.
And please don’t just quietly leave it alone. Have a press conference and announce that the new administration has decided to leave the rule in place.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 9:02 a.m. inappropriate
OMG, another right wing, pro gun missive in Crosscut! And its about the Bush administration decisive, patriotic stand for the right of any mentally deranged, law abiding citizen to turn our public spaces into shooting galleries as the rest of us mentally competent gun owners exercise our constitutional right to defend ourselves from such nuts.
So, let's see what's going on here. The constitutional right to carry concealed deadly force is being protected by a patriotic Republican President who has shown great judgment governing our country (irony intended). And the fear is that our new Democratic President will act to undermine these "rights". Why would he do that? Could the underlying inference be that he is not a true patriot? That his political leanings will undermine our "freedom"?
So exactly what freedom were the founding fathers were striving to protect here. The freedom of any citizen, without any meaningful requirement to show competency or mental stability, to be able to conceal killing devices unimagined by the constitutional framers?
Let's see - when in doubt read the directions. What does the Second Amendment to our Constitution actually says about this since this is the basis for most gun regulation, or lack thereof.
"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Considering that I am left to conclude that this article is nonsense. What does carrying concealed deadly force in public spaces have to do with maintaining a well regulated Militia (please note the militia is capitalized)?
I sincerely hope that the change we just achieved in our last election bring some sense back into the national debate. Ban weapons in public spaces. And Crosscut readers please keep in mind that you just read an article by a writer who works for a publication that likely takes large amounts of money in advertising from the gun industry. Someone who clearly has a conflict of interest when it comes to the promotion of gun sales.
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 9:13 a.m. inappropriate
OMG, another left wing, anti self defense counter-missive in Crosscut! And it raises the spectre of a silly, worst case scenario of a shooter-gone-crazy straw man as an excuse to misread the Constitution, not to mention an ignorance of the fact that in 18th century and early 19th century English, nouns (especially those that implied the existence of a proper noun) were frequently capitalized. And let's try to imagine that every where in the Constitution, "The People" refers to the population as a whole; except, apparently in the Second Amendment, where it means the Army. Hmmmm...
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 9:42 a.m. inappropriate
I have been a park ranger in North Cascades National Park for five seasons, working along the Canadian border, along State Route 20, and throughout the wilderness area. Guns have no place there, loaded or not.
A National Park is a refuge for both wildlife, plants, ecosystems, and people. There is no hunting within a National Park (unlike many National Forest areas), and thus no rational reason for having guns while visiting these unique areas.
Many restrictions are placed on our lives to create a particular quality of experience. In a National Park, we expect safety, adventure, history, and wildness. We do not expect hunting or the crack of target practice in mountain meadows. For this and many other reasons, loaded guns are (or were...) banned in National Parks.
If people have done this in the past, they broke the law and should have been fined. I only hope President Obama restores peace to our National Parks, one of the few places where we can go to find refuge from people like Mr. Schneider.
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 10:11 a.m. inappropriate
From the Merriam-Webster On Line. let's keep our definitions straight.
mi·li·tia
Pronunciation:
\m?-?li-sh?\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Latin, military service, from milit-, miles
Date:
1625
1: a: a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
b: a body of citizens organized for military service
2: the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 10:14 a.m. inappropriate
Mr. Schneider--Why do you want a gun in a National Park?
I'll tell you why I'd prefer you didn't have one--because I don't want to face more of what too often I find in National Forests: scary, irresponsible behavior. I took my stepkids to Goldmyer Hot Springs once, and on the road in we passed a group of three or four men, a lot of beer, and a big pile of projectiles. They were shooting their guns right next to and parallel to the road we'd just come in on. At Goldmyer, volunteers who maintain the place showed us bullet holes in the "Welcome" sign--something I've also seen in other parks, testifying to the enduring attraction of the outdoors to people who want to let off steam, vent, and intimidate some strangers, or some squirrels, just for the fun of it.
It's really scary to go into the wilderness knowing you might encounter someone drunk with a gun.
I'm sure you're a responsible gun owner, and so are many people who have guns. I respect your right to have a gun. But why do you need one in a place where you're not allowed to shoot anything, anyway? Making guns legal in National Parks might change things, by lowering the bar. As it is, gun owners have to be discreet if they're packing in the Parks; with this new reg., rangers will have one less tool for protecting us all from less responsible gun-toters.
Posted Fri, Jan 9, 3:51 p.m. inappropriate
Geez talk about overreaction. Nothing in the law allows for target practice or indiscriminate fire like in National Forests. This law changes nothing other than legalizing what is already being done. Most who take guns into NP do so because of the human predator not animals.
And if the poster who says he is a park ranger for the past 5 seasons is truthful he is well aware of the crime occurring within our NP's. And he/she knows damn well that guns already come in. If he/she doesn't they have no reason being a park ranger because they ignore the obvious.
FWIW I work in law enforcement and have a cross commission with the NPS on the Penninsula. I have investigated or assisted in investigating multiple crimes that have occurred within the park system here. Some violent, some not. So crime happens. Whats wrong with self protection? Point is those who have a legal right to carry guns are not and would not be the issue anyway so what's the problem?
Posted Sat, Jan 10, 10:35 p.m. inappropriate
Yarrow, your example ironically shows why guns should not be banned from national parks.
The kind of behavior you describe is already illegal. Shooting guns while drunk is reckless endangerment at least, if not specifically banned by state law. Shooting signs is destruction of government property. Target shooting inside national parks is forbidden.
So those things should not happen, right? In a perfect world, they wouldn't, but they do. There is a certain minority of people who simply don't care about the rules, or the safety of anyone else.
That's why the rule change allowing lawful carry should be applauded. The old rule did nothing to prevent irresponsible people from doing stupid things. But it did prevent responsible people (the ones who would be likely to observe the law) from defending themselves from the idiots out there.
That's the problem with "no gun" rules or laws wherever they exist. The people in examples of gun misuse are already violating laws or rules. The incident described above presumably took place while it was illegal to bring guns into national parks. The rule failed to stop the kind of behavior that scared you... and that's certainly no surprise, given that to commit that behavior, the individuals had to break several laws.
It's not legal to target shoot or to hunt in national parks, and that should not change. But that does not mean it is never legal to shoot a gun inside a park. It's legal to shoot in self-defense. And as the anecdote above showed, there are some questionable people in national parks. Why should my right to defend myself against those people be abridged inside the park, when it is intact outside of the park?
Here in Tucson, I can lawfully carry concealed in nearly all of the places surrounding the Saguaro National Park. I can carry in grocery stores, city parks, movie theaters, and nearly every other place I can legally go. Target shooting and hunting are illegal in those places, too... but a concealed weapon permit is not, and never has been, about hunting or target shooting.
If I am licensed by the state of Arizona to carry nearly everywhere within that state's borders, why should that change when I happen to enter a national park which happens to be in Arizona? The arguments against concealed carry inside parks are no different than the arguments against concealed carry elsewhere, and for better or worse, the fears of opponents of concealed carry have proven to be unfounded, in Arizona and in the 38 or so other states in which any lawful person can obtain a permit to carry concealed.
The people that get concealed carry permits have a superb record of safety and responsibility with their guns. With millions of people carrying lawfully each day, incidents of misconduct by permit holders is impressively small. Our record of lawfulness and safety is better than that of law enforcement officials. We're not the ones doing the stupid things that scare you (and me). It makes no sense to deny us the right to defend ourselves because other people do stupid things with guns.
All this rule change does is make the rules regarding concealed carry within the park the same as the state in which that park lies. The people that would carry concealed guns into parks are already doing just that outside of the park, and doing it safely (or else the permit would be revoked). People don't suddenly become reckless or violent idiots simply because they pass a sign that welcomes them to a national park.
Posted Sat, Mar 7, 11:11 p.m. inappropriate
greymatter writes:
"There is no hunting within a National Park (unlike many National Forest areas), and thus no rational reason for having guns while visiting these unique areas."
Hm. The same argument could be made for a mall, convenience store, apartment building, highway, supermarket, bus station, or marina. Absolutely no hunting in any of those, no-sirree.
Perhaps one carries firearms for reasons other than to hunt, do you think? Anyone who studiously avoids that inconvenient elephant in the room is either stupid or thinks we are.
When you were a park ranger, did you carry a gun? Why, if "guns have no place there?" Hypocrite.
If you think National Parks are such a safe and serene refuge, take a three-day unarmed hike through Organ Pipe, Sequoia, Coronado, or Padre Island. If you make it back out, I'll buy you a six pack. But you'll have to leave a six-pack for me with a neutral third party before you start.
Posted Sun, Mar 22, 3:45 p.m. inappropriate
Americans should not possess nor carry guns in any circumstances. The government is chartered to provide your protection.
Posted Tue, Apr 21, 5:39 a.m. inappropriate
"Americans should not possess nor carry guns in any circumstances. The government is chartered to provide your protection.
— Lady Be Good "
The government is chartered to provide our protection? Yeah bang up job so far....
Has anybody bothered to look at the numbers? Murder/Violent Crime rates are the highest in all the cities banning weapons. Coincidence? Hmmm...