By Cleve Wiese

Published: May 8, 2008

Visitors to Shenandoah National Park might soon be allowed to pack a new kind of gear – concealed firearms.
On April 30, Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne announced a 60-day public comment period on a proposed rule change that would overturn a decades-old prohibition of loaded guns in national parks and wilderness areas.
Under the new regulation, parks’ firearms policies would be determined by state laws on concealed weapons: For most of the country, including Virginia, that would mean permitting licensed individuals to carry guns, as long as they remain hidden. 
“The current regulations are 25 years old, and in the 25 years since they were enacted, states across the county have changed their laws with regards to concealed weapons,” said Chris Paolino, a spokesman for the Department of the Interior. “Since that time, 48 states have adopted concealed carry laws. Those laws didn’t exist when the rules were made. They couldn’t be taken into consideration.”
Advocates for the rule change say the policy, in addition to recognizing Second Amendment rights, would allow responsible gun owners the means to stave off animals and human assailants alike.
“I don’t think anyone can show or say that a park is safer or not safer than any other place,” said David Adams, president of the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, a state affiliate of the National Rifle Association. “If a person wants to carry a gun to protect themselves, they should be able to do so.”
But opponents of the rule, including many park rangers, say national parks are among the safest places in the country, and that legalizing loaded firearms within their boundaries would introduce far more danger than it would eliminate.
“People can argue that bad people already bring guns into national parks, and that’s certainly true, but there are fewer of them, and we have less violent acts, than just about any population you could extrapolate from anywhere in the United States,” said Scott McElveen, president of the Association of National Park Rangers, an organization of about 11,000 members, most current or former rangers.
There were 116,588 reported offenses in national parks in 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, including 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies, 16 kidnappings and 261 aggravated assaults, according to federal statistics. In the same year, there was one assault, one incident of arson, 12 incidents of larceny and nine weapons violations in Shenandoah National Park, according to the statistics.
Those numbers translate into a one in 708,000 chance a visitor to a national park will be a victim of a violent assault, McElveen said, a figure that would be considerably lower if urban parks, such as those in Washington D.C., New York City and St. Louis were omitted.
As for animal attacks, McElveen said many rangers worry that allowing people to carry firearms could actually engender a false sense of security and lead to reckless behavior. Humans provoke the vast majority of animal attacks in parks, he said.
“In our view people already get too close to animals in parks,” he said. “If you see a potentially dangerous animal and you don’t have a weapon, you’re natural thought is to increase the distance from it. If you think you have something to protect yourself with, you might behave differently.”
But the most problematic aspect of the proposed regulation, from the perspective of many park rangers is the difficulty of enforcing it, said John Waterman, president of the United States Ranger Lodge, part of the Fraternal Order of Police. Because some parks straddle state lines, determining which people are allowed to carry guns in which areas of a park would confuse and frustrate rangers and visitors alike, he said. And since laws prohibiting firearms in federal buildings would not be affected by the rule change, the onus would be on rangers to prevent people from carrying their concealed weapons into park visitor centers, restaurants or restrooms.
“From a law enforcement standpoint, [the new rule] would be a mess,” Waterman said. “[The current rule] keep things simple: in any national park, weapons are not allowed unless they’re broken down and stored. If something works, don’t fix it.”
Many critics of the rule change also worry the presence of firearms will violate the prevailing sense of neutrality and peace that makes national parks unique. David Adams, of the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, said that fear is misplaced.
“I don’t know that this would affect that special atmosphere, because concealed firearms are exactly that: concealed,” Adams said. “I’m not going to know if someone walking the trail is carrying a gun unless he shows it.”
But that uncertainty is exactly what some hope to avoid.
“I think the concern about whether the person next to me has a loaded weapon is another of those societal pressures that we come to parks to get away from,” McElveen said.
Comments on the proposed rule change should be directed to the Department of the Interior before June 29, Paolino said.