Speak Up: Guns in National Parks

READERS COMMENTS

The bad guys and poachers are already aremd and breaking the law. Putting restrictions on honest people simply empowers the less desirable elements in society by putting the law abiding at an unfair disadvantage.
Posted: May 11, 2008 Mike Puckett

The 1st Amendment is Freedom of Speech. The 2nd is Right to Bear Arms. These are the leading items of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments), which is about the rights of People, as opposed to the Powers granted to Authority.

To interfere with the speech of others, requires that very good reason be shown & proven. So, we cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

Same goes for arms. There are restrictions that can be shown to have compelling, legitimate grounds. However, in National Parks, etc, the common policy to forbid arms is what courts & judges will find to be "baseless".

After the Emancipation of African Americans, they were subjected for generations to hostile "Jim Crow" laws that took away their rights. The courts looked the other way, for most of a century.

In the second half of the 20th Century, a process similar to Jim Crow has occurred with respect to firearms. We have a basic, primary right (and responsibility) to be armed & "substantively competent" (meaning we can legal exert "real" force). Illegal (Jim Crow-style) laws have created an atmosphere that systematically attempts to deprecate the 2nd Amendment, a fundamental law of the land.

Like with the end of Jim Crow, when the Judiciary wakes up and begins doing its job, there will be large changes. Guns are not an aberration that need to be relegated to the rubbish heap of history ... and contemporary events continue to underscore the factual importance of an armed citizenry.

In this context, there is simply no compelling legal case to disarm folks when they go out on the trails in Parks or Wilderness. They have the right - factually - and there is no good reason to take it away - factually.
Posted: May 08, 2008 Ted Clayton

Bears, both grizzly and black, can easily overcome a human. Humans represent a valuable source of meat and fat for these animals who have a serious need to gain weight prior to hibernation. Yet attacks for predation purposes are still fairly rare.
Ingrained in these animals is an instinctive caution, if not outright fear of humans, born of thousands of years of interaction where humans, with weapons, were "bad news" to physically stronger animals. It was because of this, and because of basic principles of evolution, bears have acquired a fairly uniform aversion to humans /Because of this history bears are fairly safe when they would otherwise be extraordinarily dangerous.
I find it slightly amusing, or perhaps ironic, that the "knee jerk" liberals who find guns so repugnant unwittingly get a free ride from the preceding generations (two, four, ten thousand years ago) of men who carried weapons. Were it not for a vast unrecorded history, posie sniffer elitists would be quickly gobbled up the next time they went strolling down the trail to "Lost Lake" campground, proud as punch that there were "one with nature" and not at all like this uncouth Alaskan who carries a .44 mag in their backpack.

Posted: May 03, 2008 Joe in Alaska

Allowing guns in the national parks is simply an invitation to increased poaching. And that's already a significant problem.
Posted: May 02, 2008 Bob

No thanks. I was once faced with the possibility of sharing a white water raft with someone who wanted to bring his pistol into the wilderness "for target practice". When informed that it was not permitted, he became agitated. Something small enough to conceal is not likely to be large enough to afford protection against anything in the wilderness big enough to be a threat, aside from human beings. If people are allowed to bring their handguns into the wilderness, they most assuredly will become a threat.
Posted: May 01, 2008 Sara M.

I believe that someone who has received a concealed weapons permit should be able to carry concealed in a national park. If you trusted with a weapon on the street, surely it should be acceptable in the wilderness.
Posted: May 01, 2008 Joe B.

I agree that you should be able to carry a weapon conceled or in plain sight loaded. as long as there is not one in the chamber while in a vehical.
Posted: May 01, 2008 tommy kaschke

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