WASHINGTON — Nearly half the Senate is pushing the Bush administration to let gun owners carry handguns and other firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.
Forty-seven lawmakers — including Republican Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado — 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.
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 those of some other federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Kempthorne spokesman Chris Paolino said officials were reviewing the letter.
The current regulations say 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 reached, such as in a car trunk, said Jerry Case, the National Park Service’s chief of regulations and special park uses. The rules were developed to ensure public safety and to provide maximum protection for wildlife, he said.
Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar hasn’t seen the letter and is studying the issue, said his spokesman Cody Wertz. “The senator’s going to keep in mind the Second Amendment and sportsmen’s rights as he makes a decision,” Wertz said.
