Posted: Sunday, March 23, 2008 12:00 am
TED KERASOTE
Perspective
Under strong lobbying by the National Rifle Association, the Bush administration has decided to change how firearms are regulated in our national parks.
Currently, firearms must be cased, unloaded, and stored unless they're being used by a hunter in a park that has an authorized hunting season. This regulation, which has been in affect for 25 years, is a good one. It's also one about which I have personal knowledge, having lived in and hunted from Kelly, Wyo., a small village within Grand Teton National Park, for close to a quarter of a century.
When I hunt elk in the national forest surrounding the park, I have to transport my rifle in its case until actually crossing the park boundary. This has hardly seemed burdensome, as critics of the rule point out, especially when I consider the poaching I've witnessed in the park during these decades: elk, deer, and moose shot by people who didn't know that they were in the park or who, not fazed by the park's protection of wildlife, couldn't resist the temptation to collect some big antlers.
If the firearms rule is changed, this sort of poaching, so difficult to control even when weapons are cased and stored, will increase to the levels we see outside of national parks, where poaching remains a thriving business - one which taxes the financial and enforcement resources of our game and fish agencies.
Allowing loaded firearms to be carried in national parks will also increase the already dangerous job that rangers do as they conduct their most routine daily work, for example stopping people for speeding violations and checking backcountry permits.
The Bush administration, bending to the NRA's logic that the firearm regulation in national parks violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has suggested that instead of a blanket rule prohibiting loaded firearms in the parks, each state's regulations would be put into effect. Not only would this lead to the consequences mentioned above, but it would also create a great deal of confusion for visitors and park personnel. Whose regulations would prevail in places such as Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, or Yellowstone, which lies within three different state jurisdictions - Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming?
None of these arguments against changing the current regulation on firearms in national parks touches a third concern. National parks aren't only sanctuaries for wildlife. They're sanctuaries for people. Today, when gun violence cuts Americans down in high schools, colleges, and malls, how wonderful it is to have large tracts of our nation where guns must be put away. I say this as someone who owns numerous rifles, shotguns, and pistols, who target shoots, who hunts every year, and who is aware that prohibiting loaded weapons in national parks is no guarantee that gun violence won't erupt. Mentally ill people don't obey regulations. However, even given this uncertainty about how ill individuals will behave, most of us acknowledge that some public places should be off limits to weapons, in short, sacred places where serenity reigns, for example, church. And for millions of people, national parks are simply another place to worship in peace.
Ted Kerasote of Kelly is the author of "Out There," which won the National Outdoor Book Award, and "Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog."