From staff and wire reports | Posted: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 12:00 am
WASHINGTON - Park rangers, retirees and conservation groups are protesting a plan by the Interior Department to reconsider regulations restricting loaded guns in national parks.
The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates, meanwhile, are hailing the review as the first step to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks.
The Interior Department announced Friday that it will review gun laws on lands administered by the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The department will draw up new rules by April 30 for public comment, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in a letter to 50 senators who requested the review.
Among them were U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
Conservation groups and park rangers said the review amounted to surrender to the NRA. The groups say current regulations requiring that visitors to national parks render their weapons inaccessible were working and have made national parks among the safest places in America.
"Loaded guns are not needed and are not appropriate in our national parks," said Doug Morris, a retired park superintendent and member of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.
But gun rights advocates have said the park ban infringes on their Second Amendment rights to bear arms and their ability to defend themselves from predators, human and animal.
"Law-abiding citizens should not be prohibited from protecting themselves and their families while enjoying America's national parks and wildlife refuges," said Chris W. Cox, the NRA's chief lobbyist.