New Gun Law May Have Unintended Affects in Yellowstone

Yellowstone Insider.com ^ | October 21, 2009

[Still Thinking]

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 15:33

A law loosening gun restrictions in America's National Parks goes beyond what proponents initially argued and would allow anyone with a gun permit to openly carry a weapon in Yellowstone National Park, if legal experts are correct.

A legislation, proposed and drafted by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) was billed as a way to uniformly enforce gun laws across different states and National Parks, which are under federal supervision. The law was said to extend the state's guidelines concerning concealed carry into the federal National Park. If you had a permit for a concealed weapon in your own state and that right was recognized by the state hosting the National Park, then your permit would be recognized as well.

But the legislation, attached to a credit-card reform bill and signed by President Obama, reportedly goes beyond the concealed-carry recognition. Whether by design or accident, it removes concealed-carry provisions from the mix and basically allows state gun laws to take precedence in any National Park.That's the conclusion from the Jackson Hole Daily, which consulted with local legal experts.

We suspect the end result will be a little more complicated. Wyoming does indeed have a concealed-carry law -- you can see for yourself on the state's website -- and does indeed recognize concealed-carry permits from other states. (Websites specializing in explaining concealed-carry laws have come to the same conclusion.) However, Wyoming is one of the many states that allows citizens to openly carry a legally registered weapon. We looked at the law surrounding concealed carry in Wyoming and came to a slightly different conclusion after talking with experts. Indeed, Park Service officials in Washington, D.C. say they're still reviewing appropriate statutes before coming up with gun guidelines for each National Park.

Still, the fact that Park Rangers must add gun enforcement to their list of duties is not the most desirable of outcomes. Generally speaking, the vast majority of gun owners are responsible citizens. The problem, however, doesn't lie with responsible gun owners; it lies with irresponsible gun owners, and they, too, exist; there were issues raised by gun owners openly brandishing their weapons during Obama speeches in Arizona and Minnesota this summer, as they went out of their way to openly carry legal semiautomatic weapons in large crowds waiting to see the President. Poaching, too, is still an issue in Yellowstone. And, quite bluntly, we can't think of many instances in Yellowstone National Park where anyone would need a weapon; we're not talking about an environment where animal attacks or human crime occurs with any degree of regularity.

In the Daily article, local attorney Kent Spence of Jackson's Spence Law Firm says he would feel more comfortable camping in the Yellowstone backwoods carrying a weapon capable of taking down a bear, though he admitted pepper spray would be his first line of defense. We're not so sure every other gun owner would be as comfortable or responsible should a bear attack.

[Hacklehead]

“I think the writer of this hand-wringing diatribe might want to open a dictionary once in a while:”

I understand what you are saying, however in many cases there are differences between dictionary definitions and legal definitions. In some places people get arrested for brandishing if someone spots their CCW.

[Still Thinking]

But if that is the original title at the linked article, then we can at least blame some school of journalism.

it is. I just cut and pasted it. His vocabulary is as good as his logic.

[maine yankee]

National park service oversees parks, widerness areas,recreational areas, monuments, and historic sites.

There will be a lot of complicated issues with this.

Example; Grand Canyon NP is land ‘leased’ to the feds.

I used to work at the Gateway Arch in st louis. I was armed at work, and I was armed to and from work. When I left st louis, my pov had three bullet holes in it.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Idiocy from the reporter: “Wyoming is one of the many states that allows citizens to openly carry a legally registered weapon”

---

There is no such registration requirement in Wyoming or most “free” states. Perhaps the writer means that the law does not prohibit the open carry of a lawfully-possessed weapon.

[barb-tex]

I see your “need to carry” and raise you with my “right to carry”.
barbra ann

[P-Marlowe]

New Gun Law May Have Unintended Affects in Yellowstone

It is "Effects" not "Affects".

Public school.

[maine yankee]

does this mean the PETA people will push for;

....THE RIGHT TO ARM BEARS...

[Still Thinking]

I know. I just pasted it.

[P-Marlowe]

It is “definately” one of my pet peeves.

That, and people who spell definitely - “definately”.

[P-Marlowe]

My "Word for Windows Spelling/Grammar checker" does not know the difference between "advice" and "advise". The program keeps telling me to change advise to advice, when the correct word is advise.

[Still Thinking]

My pet peeve is when people don’t know when to use subjective vs. objective pronouns, usually in a compound. As in “The boss gave my partner and I a new assignment.”

[Paladin2]

At least they didn’t build the Arch on the East side of the River. ;-)

[ctdonath2]

Statistics don’t matter when they happen to YOU.

It’s not that such events happen often.
It’s that they do happen - and being prepared is harmless.

People can throw around stats regarding bear attacks all they like - doesn’t change the fact that my wife DID almost walk into a bear (at which point I was keenly aware of what was _not_ within arm’s reach).

[Paladin2]

That's my point.

I've had (black) bears hanging around campsites in the back country and chased a cub up a tree (back in my youth) and had a friend eaten by an aggressive Griz on gov't parkland in AK. Nothing to fool with.

[ctdonath2]

(Was agreeing, not disparaging.)

[oldenuff2no]

Designated wilderness areas are monitored by the USFS not the park service. And by the way, I pack with horses and mules and hunt in wilderness areas all the time. Except for existing state and federal laws there are no restrictions on carrying a firearm in a wilderness area.

[maine yankee]

The National Wilderness Preservation System coordinates the wilderness activities of the four federal agencies — Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wilderness areas are parts of national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests, and the public domain and may include land in several different units managed by different agencies. Initially, the NWPS included 34 areas protecting 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²) in the national forests. As of August 2008, there were 704 wilderness areas in the NWPS, preserving 107,514,938 acres (435,098 km2).

Most U.S. wilderness areas are in National Forests but the largest amount of wilderness land is administered by the National Park Service. The largest contiguous wilderness complex in the United States is the Noatak and Gates of the Arctic Wildernesses in Alaska at 12,743,329 acres (51,570 km²); the largest wilderness area outside Alaska is the Death Valley Wilderness in southeastern California

Spend spring break on lake powell or lake mead - and you’ll see every kind of weapon imaginable. One of my partners confiscated an M-79 from a drunk frat boy, and ‘dyn-o-mite’ fishing occures at least once a year.