Posted on 11/30/2006 9:58:07 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
Let’s see how many reasons there are to carry a concealed weapon into a national park.
Perhaps you might encounter a rattlesnake or some other potentially deadly critter that would pose a threat. Perhaps you were with an argumentative acquaintance who had pushed you to the limit in a discussion over, well, gun control. Perhaps a little paranoia had set in since you climbed out of bed that morning and you thought you needed a concealed weapon to ward off any attackers - real or imagined.
Surely there are others, but none of them are particularly legitimate. Yet, outgoing U.S. Sen. George Allen wants to put a cap on his one-term career in the Senate with legislation that would let visitors carry a concealed weapon into a national park.
Such weapons are now banned and they ought to remain banned.
Peter Hardin of Media General News Service detailed Allen’s last legislative hurrah in a story last week. He noted that the Virginia Republican wrote in a letter to the Virginia Gun Owners Association three days before the election that since the secretary of the Interior has refused to repeal the gun ban in national parks, he would introduce legislation to that effect in the lame-duck session of Congress.
With Democrats about to take over Congress, it is not likely that the controversial measure will gain approval in this session. If not passed, the bill would not carry over to the next Congress.
But that may not be necessary since Senator-elect Jim Webb, the Democrat who defeated Allen, has promised to submit a similar bill and will work for its passage. His proposal is no better than Allen’s.
While carrying or possessing loaded firearms in park areas is generally prohibited, some parks authorize hunting and do permit firearms during open hunting season.
Which is fine. But why the need to carry concealed weapons into a national park?
A National Park Service spokesman told Hardin that serious crimes against individuals in the parks are extremely rare and there is no data demonstrating a need for visitors to carry concealed weapons.
Spokesman David Barna said that allowing people “with minimal or no training to carry firearms in national park areas will not lower the already negligible crime rate.” He added that it could “increase the possibility of basic altercations turning into something much more serious.”
While the Gun Owners Coalition naturally supports the measure, many others do not, including Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He said he hoped the bill would die in the Senate, adding, “I don’t think there’s ... any reason why we need this.”
He’s right. National parks are refuges for nature and open vistas and trails and creeks and streams. They are places where people can escape from the weary rush of life into a peaceful realm that’s quiet. They don’t need to have to be worried about whether the guy approaching on one of the trails is packing a concealed weapon.
And they won’t have to worry about that if the Senate does what it should do with Allen’s bill - consign it to the legislative ash heap.
His name was the first thing that came to mind for me also.
I agree. the northern parts of Hawaii have been famous for drug crops/gangs for years.
People need concealed weapons because lefties have children.
"All-right! Time for a crime spree in the National Parks!"
Who's got a pic of that criminal from the Simpsons?
Typically people don't have to worry about whether a law-abiding citizen is packing a concealed weapon. And if the person approaching you on a trail is the type of person you have to worry about, then it doesn't matter whether or not weapons are banned (unless the ban happens to have prevented you from carrying a means of defending yourself if the person turns out to be a criminal intending to commit a robbery, rape, or murder).
You mean the party led by the POTUS promising to sign the AWB when it reaches his desk? Sorry, the GOP is not different from the 'craps on gun-control just as the NRA is merely the other side of the gun-control fece of Sarah Brady.
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and arms. NRA KMA
Your cell phone will have NO SERVICE inside most of Yellowstone National Park. There are a few areas around the big stores (Canyon, West Thumb, Old Faithful, Mammoth, Fishing Bridge) where you will have a functioning phone. I visit the park about every 2 weeks form early April until mid September. As a backup, I bring my ham radio handheld. I can reach the repeater on Sawtelle Mountain (Idaho) from most areas inside YNP.
But did he use a gun? Ought not knives be included in the restrictions? And rocks? There are tons of rocks in those parks that are potential deadly weapons, so first we must remove the rocks.
There are a number of National Parks in the western states that are home to Bears, large and small Bears, and of different colors too. A chance encounter with one will make your day. My wife and I have camped in a number of these parks and having a loaded 44 mag. under your pillow at night makes for sound sleeping.
My point was that a gun might have saved one or more of those lives.
If they had been carrying pistols he would have been shot while attempting to commit.
Joie Armstrong who was brutally murdered in Yosemite National Park would not call such concerns "paranoia"....if she were still alive.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/s/p/2002/stayner/STAYNER15TR03.DTL
I've read more than one article in the past about people who have been murdered in national parks.
And of course, there are the friendly critters who just might decide that you'd make a good snack...
But hopolophobes don't consider ANY reason to be legitimate for being armed, concealed or not.
Mark
The author is naive and uniformed. National parks and forests have been taken over by ARMED Mexican drug cartels. And it would be real nice to not "worry" about the guy approaching is packing. Just like the government and some liberal journalis to want to take OUR guns and do NOTHING about this!
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A Pot Farm May Be Coming To Your Local Park Soon
The war on drugs, is no longer concentrated solely along our borders, it's now in our own backyard.
"What you are looking at is what we would call a Mexican national drug trafficking organization large scale marijuana cultivations," Darren said.
http://www.ktvu.com/station/3891621/detail.html
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A Mexican cartel may be behind a roughly 20,000-plant grove discovered by south county houses.
Sheriff's investigators found at least two loaded .22-caliber rifles, a crossbow and a BB gun – probably used as protection against coyotes and other animals.
"This is absolutely amazing," said Ron Slimm, supervising park ranger at O'Neill Regional Park, as he surveyed the remains of a 4,000-plant marijuana grove on a steep, terraced slope.
The marijuana groves were hidden along a steep slope, just beyond the view from the million-dollar homes above and just out of view from the main park trail below.
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1284046.php
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Tonight this nation's national forests are being overrun by Mexican drug cartels and their marijuana-growing operations. We reported earlier this week on a massive marijuana bust in a national forest in Northern California, 800 miles from the Mexican border. Officials are almost certain that Mexican drug gangs are behind this operation, and many more around the country.
As the marijuana gardens grow in size and the law enforcement efforts intensify, agents say traffickers are becoming more violent, and are a significant threat to recreational users of our national parks and forests. Now the FBI is still looking for hard evidence that the seven illegal aliens in custody in Siskiyou County are directly related to those marijuana-growing operations. I
http://www.envirolink.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=56650&sid=91895accf80a1837fdd8dcc3cbc412bc
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It's not uncommon for national forests and parks to be used by those seeking to cash in on the lucrative criminal market for marijuana in the U.S.
Illegal marijuana farms like this are often heavily guarded, posing a threat to law enforcement, park rangers, and hikers. Not surprisingly, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle in late 2005, the main culprits behind marijuana farms on public lands are Mexican drug cartels ... the same Mexican drug cartels who are tunneling marijuana into the U.S. and earning billions of dollars from the illegal marijuana market
http://www.regulatemarijuana.org/home/node/326
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The discovery of 22,740 marijuana plants growing in and around Point Reyes National Seashore last week wasn't only the biggest pot seizure ever made in Marin County. It was an environmental mess that will take several months and tens of thousands of dollars to clean up.
deral officials believe as much as 80 percent of the marijuana on public land is grown by Mexican drug cartels that have turned to places like Point Reyes National Seashore, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park and Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in this era of tightened border security; growing the drug here is far easier than smuggling it in.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/06/MNG77L01HA1.DTL
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Drug dealers are planting pot farms all over our national parks, and the Park Service is struggling to root them out. TIME goes on a raid. Their objective: a marijuana plantation a few hundred yards from a well-traveled tourist area.
Armed combat is hardly what families hope to encounter as they head for their summer vacations in America's national parks and forests. But drug smugglers, methamphetamine cooks and cannabis cultivators are invading federal lands as never before. A U.S. Park Service ranger in Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was gunned down by a Mexican pot smuggler last August. In Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest, 192 meth labs have been dismantled over the past three years. And marijuana farms are infesting Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest and Alabama's Talladega National Forest.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030804-471161,00.html
thanks, that's sad, but informative.
send it to Jorge Bush,too.
How disgustingly inconsiderate. Couldn't one of those ladies had place a call back to the police and let them know to approach the scene... hopping up and down and singing a song.
It's a shame that one of the ladies wasn't armed, this jerk will do it again..... (or worse).
Changes in drug laws that allow the gov't to seize private property that is used to cultivate marijuana has also played a big part in the movement of "farms" on to public lands.
The law of unintended consequences at work.
This gets so tiresome.
FMCDH(BITS)
Well put. That said, I still want to CC (or have my weapon nearby) in a spa or resort.
FMCDH(BITS)
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