A survey stemming from the Bush administration's plan to allow concealed carry of guns in national parks and national wildlife refuges predicts the result will be more wildlife shootings and management problems.
The survey, performed for the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, found that 77 percent of 1,400 present and former employees of the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service predict that the controversial proposed rule reversing the long-standing prohibition of carrying loaded, concealed weapons in national parks and wildlife refuges will have an adverse affect on the ability of NPS and USFWS employees to accomplish their mission.
This finding and others are contained in Natural and Cultural Resource Impacts and Management Consequences of the Proposed Regulation to Authorize the Possession of Concealed Firearms in Units of the National Park & National Wildlife Refuge Systems.
While DOI has neglected to provide an analysis of the potential impacts of its proposed rule, the retirees group performed the survey to assess the impacts that these experts foresee should the regulation take effect. Other key results of the survey include:
* 75 percent feel that there will be an increase in opportunistic or impulse wildlife killings in parks and refuges; and
* 83 percent of survey respondents anticipated that the proposal will increase the overall level of complexity for management of their park or refuge.
In issuing the report, the coalition emphasized that Interior Department officials violated the procedural
requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act in failing to adequately examine the foreseeable impacts of the relaxed gun regulation. Additionally, the coalition asserts that Interior officials should have consulted the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service pursuant to ESA, as 89 threatened or endangered species inhabit the parks that would be affected by the regulation.
Separately, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Ethics predicts that once the regulation is published in the Federal Register, a move anticipated to occur this month, “there would be a multi-group suit filed" challenging the legality of the regulation.
The new report from the coalition highlights the enforcement complexities and threats to public safety that should have been addressed in an analysis of reasonable alternatives to the rule under NEPA.
Based on the report, CNPSR is renewing its call for Interior officials to withdraw the proposed rule.
"We think the proposed rule is manufactured and driven politically to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
Data show that parks are among the safest places to be in this country," says Bill Wade, chairman of the coalition's executive council. "Moreover, we believe it will create more problems than it can possibly fix. It is likely to alter, over time, the friendly atmosphere visitors look forward to in parks, where they go to get away from the day to day pressures and influences of their everyday lives, including worry about guns."
Comments
NEWS ITEM - October 10, 2008. No-return policy gets clerk killed
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Police say a customer in a Knoxville mall fatally shot a clothing-store employee because he was upset about a clothing purchase.
Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk says William Johnson, 42, went to Knoxville Center Mall Wednesday afternoon determined to get satisfaction from Reno Men's Wear.
Some mall merchants say the clothing store has a no-refund policy. Police wouldn't say exactly what Johnson wanted or what the disputed merchandise was.
But police say a preliminary investigation suggests Johnson became upset, pulled out a handgun and shot 29-year-old employee Ahmed Nahl.
The suspect was injured in a brief gunbattle with police before his capture. He is charged with murder and is recovering in a hospital. *
-Associated Press
Moral - I agree that must people are responsible gun owners, but easy access to a gun makes it just too easy to overreact. Such will be the case with a harmless animal that gets too close for comfort to some visitor or the rustle in the bushes that just happens to be a child who wandered off the trail. There will be blood.
Add Alaskan Gov. Palin to the equation here, regarding the National Parks, you'll see aerial game slaughter within the park boundaries. Again, guns within the National Parks is a dangerous precedent in policy making. Parks are for restive peace and serenity...not for gun touting fools!
Wonderful, the usual group of knee-jerk uninformed anti-gun miscreants have reared their heads to complain about the forthcoming rule change.
Again, let's examine Texas CHL conviction rates vs. the general population to see just how bloodthirsty and trigger-happy license holders are:
In 2006, there were 258,162 active CHLs, but only 140 total convictions.
Overall - The general population over age 21 is over 7 times as likely to commit any offense listed by DPS as are CHLs
Assault - The general population over age 21 is over 8 times as likely to commit an assault as are CHLs
Burglary - The general population over age 21 is over 38 times as likely to commit a burglary as are CHLs
Prohibited Weapons - The general population over age 21 is over 21 times as likely to be convicted of possessing prohibited weapons as are CHLs
Robbery - The general population over age 21 is over 63 times as likely to commit a robbery as are CHLs
Source: Texas Department of Public Safety
Enough with the idiotic suggestion that those of us who went through the headache of getting licensed are going to start shooting at birds and marmots because we get bored. Not going to happen.
Enough with the surveys of former brush clearers, entrance fee collectors, and garbage collectors telling us how hard their jobs are going to become once this rule is changed. I would be open to hearing what LAW ENFORCEMENT RANGERS have to say about this, but ultimately, they don't get to make the go/no-go call on this either. What a civilian employee of the NPS has to say about this is utterly and completely irrelevant.
Kurt: have you even seen a gun in real life? Didn't think so.
Most of the people complaining about this change seem blissfully unaware that carry is already allowed in National Forests. I don't recall hearing of any incidents there.
Wow--"What a civilian employee of the NPS has to say abouty this is utterly and completely irrelevant." Whose opinions other than those of NPS employees should we consider then? Texas-Fight's? People who have seen a gun in real life? Pro-gun miscreants?
Rick Smith
Beamis,
I'd say what coalition members have to say is highly relevant, more so than folks who visit parks once or twice or even a dozen times a year. And for someone like Rick, who spent more than three decades on the ground in the parks, I'd say his two cents is incredibly relevant.
How you can say that sort of experience is irrelevant is mind-boggling. Perhaps you can explain your point of view.
Beamis,
Since Rick is a member of the coalition, and since you said, "What a CNPSR member has to say about this is utterly and completely irrelevant," I think it's pretty clear you implied that Rick's views were irrelevant.
Beyond that, your argument can be turned around an applied to CCW permit holders, no? I mean, to borrow your words, they come from a bastion of conservative and pro 2nd amendment viewpoints, so if CNPSR viewpoints are irrelevant for the reasons you state, then so be it for CCW permit holders.
Further, I don't think the coalition's survey was intended to reflect a "sample of American views or mainstream thinking about guns and the rights of the citizenry to own and lawfully use them" but rather to reflect the viewpoints and observations of NPS and USFWS rangers who are on the ground in the parks and wildlife refuges on a daily basis interacting with visitors. Frankly, I'd wager that they have a better grasp of the potential problems that could arise than does the general public.
No offense, Beamis, but that's a load of crap. The Constitution isn't some rigid document that stands still - we're allowed to use common sense laws, as the Supreme Court has said numerous times.
In response to the request by a previous poster, here are some comments from a member of CNPSR who performed full law enforcement duties for 29 of my 30 years in the NPS. I worked in 8 parks including several with very active law enforcement programs: Lake Mead, Grand Canyon, and Colonial NHP, plus one park (Glacier) where the question of bears and weapons often comes up.
Under the criteria suggested above, I believe that experience and something in the range of 1600 hours of formal law enforcement training might make me at least as well qualified on this subject as folks who hold a concealed weapons permit. As noted on another post on this site, in many states CHL holders are not required to receive any training, or demonstrate any ability to safely use a firearm.
I'll also make a key point up-front – I am a gun owner and therefore not "anti-gun. We life in a rural area and my wife is Annie Oakley reincarnated with a shotgun. That said, we've never felt the need to carry a weapon when we're visiting national parks.
The "need" for visitors to carry firearms – concealed or otherwise—in national parks is a political or philosophical one, rather than a response to a demonstrated problem. I suspect most people have already made up their mind on this subject. I will, however, clarify some information posted above.
I agree that most individuals who hold state-issued concealed weapons permits are law-abiding citizens. However, since the statement has been made that CHL holders are rarely a problem, I took the above suggestion, checked the official statistics on the Texas Dept. of Public Safety website, and found some unsettling data. Apparently the state was also concerned by the following, since they've sanitized the posted data after 1999, and now only show very limited statistics:
1. The number of convictions of CHL holders provides a very incomplete picture of violations by that group, since in 64% of the cases where an arrest for a violation occurred, the state was never notified of the disposition of the case (hence no "conviction" is shown in the totals.) This means that the number of convictions could well be more than twice what is shown on the site. The state depends on local jurisdictions to report both arrests and convictions of CHL holders, a process that often simply falls through the crack.
2. In the category of felony offenses, there were five times as many charges than convictions resulting from arrests of CHL holders. Why? In most of the felony arrests, the disposition was not reported. Yes, I realize that individuals are innocent until proven guilty, but from the standpoint of public safety, I'd be very concerned about those remaining cases which were plea-bargained to a lesser charge or dismissed for other reasons. Whether or not a conviction was reported, something obviously happened to trigger all those arrests. A lot of dangerous situations occurred involving people who were legally carrying a concealed weapon. How many are "a lot"?
One chart on the state website doesn't give the timeframe for the stats, but it appears to be for the first 40 months or so after Texas instituted the current CHL system. During that time, CHL holders were arrested for 672 felony offenses, including 22 murders, 32 aggravated sexual assaults, and 179 assaults causing bodily injury. A total of 135 of those arrests resulted in convictions, and the outcome of 362 other cases was not reported.
During this same time period, 720 Texas CHL holders were arrested for driving or boating while intoxicated, 293 for Assaults Causing Bodily Injury, and 1,028 other misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and making terroristic threats. I find it interesting that the state no longer reports on any of those categories.
Yes, on a percentage basis compared to the total population, conviction rates for CHL holders are statistically very small. Somehow, that doesn't reassure me very much when I know how many serious violations were being committed by Texans who had a permit to pack a concealed weapon.
To quote a previous poster on another thread on this same topic, "Supposedly low crime rates are wonderful until you're the one who's victimized."
One last trend concerns me. If we consider only convictions for such violations in Texas, the total number for the years 2005-2006 doubled when compared to the 2002-2003 period. I wonder how that correlates to the sharp increase in requests for new CHL permits?
However, not to worry. I've been assured previously that "The State of Texas vouches for" all those folks.
The original subject of this thread was a recent survey. No, it probably doesn't meet all tests for a statistical sample. However, I'd put considerable stock in the opinions of people who spent years working and living in parks, and who therefore came into contact with countless park visitors in every conceivable situation. I find it interesting that this survey at least provides some information - something the Department made no effort to do as part of the decision process.