Friday, May 30, 2008
Editorial: Guns 'n parks? Make any rule easy to obey
Gun-rights advocates are pushing to allow concealed firearms in national parks.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
The Interior Department in Washington is considering changing a rule that forbids people to carry concealed firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposes to let visitors carry them if they're allowed on similar state lands.
National parks frequently cross state borders, though. So where there is clarity, the change would sow confusion. That's not a good idea.
While driving the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, where visitors to state parks can carry guns, people with concealed carry permits would be able to pack loaded firearms -- so long as they were concealed; the great majority of national parks do not allow hunting, and long gun restrictions would still apply.
When armed parkway visitors cross the state line into North Carolina, though, they would have to store their sidearms unloaded and out of reach. North Carolina bans concealed firearms in its state parks.
"The public wants consistency," the National Park Service's public affairs chief, David Barna, told the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times this week. "And the park service view has always [said] well, there is consistency: You just can't bring them [guns] into national parks."
Simple enough.
Gun-rights advocates argue for consistency as well, though -- throughout the federal lands system, rather than across state borders. People can bring guns onto U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in some states, but not national parkland.
Just where consistency should lie is in dispute, and how one views the issue seems to depend on a person's thoughts on who needs protection from whom.
Gun-rights advocates say isolated park visitors need to be able to protect themselves against wild animals and human predators.
Park Service personnel say wild animals need to be protected from human visitors: poachers, vandals and, well, doofuses -- not their word, but ours, for people who report they shot at a grizzly and think they might have hit it. It might be dead, or it might be out in the woods in a heap of hurtin'.
Whatever the gun rule, it should be clear so that all law-abiding citizens can follow it without confusion.
