Guns in National Parks

[NOTE: Same letter sent to Senator Jeff Bingaman, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. NOTE ALSO: You can go to the bottom of this page and click on the link to view the letter from the Senators to Kempthorne]

SENT VIA FAX

January 4, 2008

Congressman Nick Rahall
Chairman, Natural Resources Committee
2307 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Rahall:

We are deeply concerned about a letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne dated December 14, 2007, signed by 47 Senators that calls for changing the regulations pertaining to firearms in national parks (and other public lands).

This letter contains several inaccuracies that could mislead the uninformed reader in a significant way. Specifically, it states, “As you know, 36 CFR 2.4, applicable to the National Park Service ... prohibits individuals from possessing a firearm on lands managed by [that agency] - even citizens with valid concealed weapons permits. These regulations infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, who wish to transport and carry firearms on or across these lands.”

In fact, the specific section of the Code of Federal Regulations referred to in the letter goes on to say, “Traps, nets and unloaded weapons may be possessed within a temporary lodging or mechanical mode of conveyance when such implements are rendered temporarily inoperable or are packed, cased or stored in a manner that will prevent their ready use.”

Our experience managing national parks and visitor and resource protection programs in parks for decades has convinced us that the existing regulations pertaining to firearms are effectively serving both the public interest and the resource protection mandate of the National Park Service. Except during the course of criminal investigations (especially poaching) park rangers do not make inquiries regarding law-abiding visitors who may have guns with them providing that they are out of sight and presumably packed in such a manner that they are not readily available to be pointed at a person or wildlife. In places where hunters must pass through a park en-route to lands where hunting is legal extra efforts have long been made to assure that individuals carrying their hunting rifles through a park are fully informed of the rules. Invariably, such educational efforts are successful and hunters have cooperated without a problem. Over the years we've seen no evidence that park visitors are inconvenienced by the current regulations.

We believe that to change these regulations so that visitors might wear or keep firearms close at hand in national parks - guided by differing state laws -could significantly increase the danger to visitors in national parks. Equally worrisome is that such a practice would almost certainly put wildlife in many parks at greater risk. Poaching would become easier. And visitors who believe that carrying a firearm provides them with extra “security” and the authority to shoot animals would be far more likely to use deadly force whenever they feel the slightest threat. Information gathered by State and Federal wildlife management organizations throughout the country overwhelmingly indicates that both people and wildlife are safer when guns are not the first choice when people feel threatened.

Should this issue of changing this regulation come before your Committee, we urge you to assure that it does not get favorable consideration.

Sincerely,

J. W. Wade
Chair, Executive Council