WASHINGTON -- Led by Idaho Republican Mike Crapo and Montana Democrat Max Baucus, 47 senators are pushing the Bush administration to allow gun owners to carry firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.
The lawmakers have signed a letter asking Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to lift Reagan-era restrictions that prevent citizens from carrying readily accessible firearms onto lands managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The current regulations, developed in the early 1980s, "infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners who wish to transport and carry firearms on or across these lands," the senators wrote.
The policies also differ from some other federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service. "These inconsistencies in firearms regulations for public lands are confusing, burdensome and unnecessary," the letter said.
Thirty-nine Republicans and eight Democrats signed the letter, including both senators from 17 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., signed the letter, as did fellow GOP Sens. Wayne Allard of Colorado, John Ensign of Nevada and Pete Domenici of New Mexico.
Kempthorne spokesman Chris Paolino said officials had received the letter and were reviewing it.
"We will take the senators' views into consideration," Paolino said.
The current regulations, adopted in 1983 under then-Interior Secretary James Watt, state that visitors to national parks must render their weapons inaccessible. Guns do not have to be disassembled, but they must be put somewhere that is not easily accessible, such as in a car trunk, said Jerry Case, chief of regulations and special park uses for the National Park Service.
"They don't have to be broken down," he said. "Preferably they're in your trunk and unloaded. Our regulations do allow people to transport weapons through a park as long as it's not accessible."
The rules were developed to ensure public safety and provide maximum protection for wildlife, Case said, noting that before the rules were adopted, "people would go out and shoot wildlife in national parks." Everything from snakes to bears to wolves and coyotes were shot by park visitors, whether for sport or because people felt threatened, Case said.
National parks have a lower crime rate than many similarly sized communities, Case said, adding that many national parks have large campsites. "If you have people start plinking around with weapons, then you have accidents," he said.
Lindsay Nothern, a spokesman for Crapo, said there was no single incident that led to the letter to Kempthorne, a former Idaho governor and senator.
"People (in Idaho and other Western states) have been complaining about it for a long time. It's more a matter of why not?" Nothern said. "We've got a guy who's a Westerner as Interior secretary. He certainly understands these issues."
The National Rifle Association has long pushed for relaxation of the gun ban, but Nothern said no lobbying group was behind the letter.
"People want to see a bogeyman in this and there isn't one there," he said. "It's about consistency, and how folks use the land."
While some gun-rights groups argue that park visitors need guns for self-protection, Nothern said that was not an argument Crapo was making. "We are doing it for consistency in the law, so people can follow the law," he said.
Baucus spokesman Barrett Kaiser said there's "no reason that law-abiding citizens shouldn't be allowed to carry a firearm on our public lands."
Baucus "thinks it's a matter of Second Amendment rights, and it's also the right thing to do for people who simply want to cross through our parks to access prime hunting areas," Kaiser said.
The National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group that works to protect and enhance national parks, supports the current regulations.
"There's no reason to need a gun in a national park, and it would possibly lead to unfortunate accidents and other problems, so we'd rather not see them in the parks," said Laura Loomis, the group's senior director of government affairs.
source-http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/By MATTHEW DALY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
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