Gun debate plays out at Mount Rainier National Park

A debate on allowing firearms in national parks splits local residents like the icy fissures that crease the flanks of Mount Rainier. People like Jim Williams and Jim McAfee, long-time National Rifle Association members, see it as a Second Amendment issue.

George Coulbourn is an NRA member too but works as a volunteer backcountry ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. He sees no benefit to allowing people to carry loaded weapons in the park. Kris Paynter is the mother of two young girls and the wife of a police detective. She said allowing guns at Mount Rainier would ruin the sense of sanctuary the park now offers.

Park rules, last updated in 1983, require firearms to be temporarily inoperable or stowed so they are not easily accessible. But a call for change came in December, when 47 U.S. senators asked Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to revise existing laws to allow park visitor to carry firearms in the parks when allowed by state law.

Last month, Kempthorne said the department would develop a firearms policy revision by April 30.

The NRA, which pushed for the review, argues park visitors have the right to protect themselves against wild animals and people. The association also argued the existing law is confusing because it differs from regulations allowing loaded weapons on other federal recreation lands. Visitors can carry firearms in national forests, but not on adjacent national park land, NRA officials said.

“From my view, a lot of restrictions we have are unnecessary, said Williams, a Puyallup resident, addresses the issue first from the perspective of the Second Amendment. “I think people who hike in the park should be able to carry a gun to protect themselves.” McAfee, a Tacoma resident and president of the Pierce County Sportsmen’s Council, agreed: “I would be in favor of people being able to carry a firearm if they felt it was necessary to do so, based on Second Amendment rights.” Alan Gottlieb of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation said the unsolved 2006 slayings of two Seattle women killed while hiking near Granite Falls is an example of the dangers one can encounter in area forests.

“If you’re out in the woods, calling 911 doesn’t do you any good,” Gottlieb said. “If some of these people had guns in the national park where they were victimized, I would think some of them wouldn’t be victims.”

He also pointed to the law enforcement rangers who carry weapons and wearing body armor. A 2004 report by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility stated park rangers and U.S. Park Police “are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents.”

Violent crimes have occurred at Mount Rainier. There was a double rape and armed robbery on Rampart Ridge in 1978. In 1981 there was an armed robbery at the National Park Inn. The 1996 death of Sheila Ann Kearns, a housekeeper at the inn, was ruled a homicide.

The park’s law enforcement rangers, who undergo standard law enforecement training in tactics and firearms, handled nine reports of serious crimes -- all thefts or larcenies -- in 2007, during which more than 1.04 million people visited the park. That is a rate of .86 violent crimes for every 100,000 recreational visitors.

“We are fairly close to a major metropolitan area so we get people crimes,” said Chuck Young, chief ranger at Mount Rainier.

“Maybe once every three to five years we get something that causes us to arrest someone for assault. Most often, the people crimes we get are domestic-type disputes in a campground. It usually involves alcohol. Maybe we get three or four of those in a year.”

The most common problem at the park, Young said, is traffic violations. In the last five years, parks rangers have issued 1,024 traffic citations, including 568 for speeding.

In the same five years, they wrote 34 citations for possession or improper transportation of a firearm.

“If you look at the numbers, in terms of visitation year after year, and compare that to the number of incidents, I would have to say it’s one of the safest places in the country –- your national parks,” said Mount Rainier superintendent Dave Uberuaga.

“I think it could change, over time, the experience and feel of Mount Rainier if guns were prevalent. It could change the feel,” Uberuaga said.

A park volunteer for eight years, Coulbourn views the debate from the perspective of a hunting safety instructor, member of the state’s master hunter program and a veteran of 60 years of hunting. “It is inappropriate for a visitor to a national park carry a weapon to defend himself against the wildlife inhabitants of the park,” he said.

“If you’re not comfortable visiting the park because of animals, you don’t belong there,” Coulbourn said. “I have seen countless bears in the backcountry of Mount Rainier. But every single one of them has ignored me or run away.”

He added that the handgun a park visitor would likely carry into the park would not have enough stopping power to bring down a bear or cougar.

Greg Shimek of Lakewood is a gun collector. He has donated money to defend the right of people to carry firearms, but he doesn’t think that right includes places like Mount Rainier.

He fears people will turn to their guns when trouble arises. “Conflict resolution through violence is not the answer.” As a mother of 4 1/2-year-old and 8-month-old girls, Paynter just sees no need for guns in the parks, even though her husband wears a gun as a police detective.

“There should be places where we don’t have to worry about people running around with guns. It should be a sanctuary,” she said. “The national parks should have that feel, a place you can go and not worry about the person in front of you on the trail having a gun.”

[Mount Rainier National Park law enforcement rangers Matt Knowles, left, and Stefan Lofgren practice custody tactics this week at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center in Burien. Rangers, who carry weapons and wear body armor, get 40 hours of refresher firearms training a year.]

Department of the Interior - Criminalizing Citizens since 1983.

I’m not positive of the Statute of Limitations, and have no interest in spending any more time in court than I have to, but I recall an incident about a dozen years back where a certain campground was set upon by several drunk and armed good~old~boys.

I also recall how two brothers got the drop on them, disarmed them, tied them up, and then called the park rangers when they were a good 50 miles down the road. I don’t recall whatever became of the “happy campers” because I was, er, long gone by the time the rangers arrived.

I am amused when I encounter people who feeeeel that, because the law says you must do (or NOT do) something, that you must do (or not do) it.

Molan Labe!

The regulation prevents carry of guns in Nat parks was not a law passed by Congress but a restriction done by James Watts Sec of DOI in the Reagan period.

These fools don’t see the irony. Here we have a true non-recreational, survival use for firearms, and they want to ban it. If I or a family member are perchance attacked and killed by a wild beast in a NP wherein visitors are forbidden firearms... does that not open up the possibility of a wrongful death suit against the state inasmuch as a firearm could have prevented it?

Where in the 2nd Amendment did it specify a location?

The real question for the Supreme Court and the government is if the Bill of Rights are rights confered upon the people by God and spelled out in the Constitution, then they are absolute rights.

If the RTKBA is an absolute right that shall not be infringed, there are all kinds of government policies from firearms in federal buildings, courts, airplanes, ownership of fully automatic firearms, concealed carry laws, federal instant background checks on purchase, FFL licenses, that all need to be examined.

Most people and government don't like change and the current focus on RTKBA is going to bring about change (I hope.)

Remember how they have been telling us about all the meth labs that are now in the National Forests? Can you imagine accidentally walking up on such a situation unarmed.

Also there were those women killed in Yellowstone a few years ago, as well the mother and daughter killed up by Tiger Mountain here. Serial killers love forested areas. I would never go into the woods unarmed.

Tiger Mt? We are almost neighbors since Anne and I
live up 208th (Kerriston Rd) in the Watershed.

King Co deputies never come up here and response is
at least an hour away. My formerly gun-hating wife
now carries and would not hesitate popping a cap
were her life in danger.

I don’t think people should use the NP as a shooting range
but carry for personal defense should always be lawful
everywhere in this free country.

“does that not open up the possibility of a wrongful death suit against the state inasmuch as a firearm could have prevented it?”

Don't know. It hard to sue the Gov. There would have to be some sort of event or precedence.

Thanks for the clarification and history lesson, fernwwod.

It still raises the question of how unelected bureaucrats can restrict a constitutional right via a bureaucratic decree. Only congress may pass law. There’s no exception for judges, bureaucrats, polliwogs or great hairy apes.

What’s to prevent a bureaucrat from restricting a publication critical of the federal government? What’s to prevent Marxist bureaucrats from imposing taxes?

Either we got individual rights or we ain’t got none. It’s way past time to sit the fascist bureaucrats in the peanut gallery.

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