Ignorant Editorial on NYTimes.com

We had posted an article written a few weeks back about how senators were petitioning to try and get a ban on LEGAL guns in state parks lifted so that hunters could pass through them without having to dissasemble their guns, and so that legal gun owners could protect themselves in all areas.

Just so that everyone can be aware of all sides of the argument, I am posting an editorial that appeared today, January 7th, 2008 on NYTimes.com

Keeping Guns Out of the Parks

Forty-seven United States senators recently wrote to the secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, asking him to lift the ban on carrying ready-to-fire weapons in national parks and wildlife refuges. Under current law, guns carried into or through a national park or refuge must be unloaded, taken apart, or cased in a way “that will prevent their ready use.” According to the senators’ letter, this rule infringes on gun owners’ rights and is “confusing, burdensome and unnecessary.”

There is nothing confusing about the distinction between federal lands where hunting is allowed and national parks, where hunting is not. (Nor should someone who is confused by the difference be carrying a loaded weapon.) It is also no burden to unload a rifle and slip it into a case before, say, driving through Yellowstone.

The old adage used to be that there were plenty of gun laws, they just had to be enforced. These days, most gun laws are under unrelenting attack, thanks to the National Rifle Association’s unbridled influence in Congress and the state legislatures.

The senators who signed this letter — led by Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, and Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat — insist that the federal government is infringing upon the gun-carrying rights granted by some states. As so often happens when guns are in question, the senators have forgotten to insist upon the rights of the vast majority of citizens, who choose not to carry guns.

They also appear to have forgotten that national parks and refuges are federal lands, set aside as peaceful preserves for all the species that enjoy them, including humans. Ready-to-fire guns have no place in them.