A ruling that blocks people from bringing loaded and concealed weapons into the nation’s national parks was praised today by several national park ranger associations.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an injunction stopping implementation of enforcement of the new U.S. Department of Interior rule.
The ranger associations said that under intense political pressure from the National Rifle Association, the Interior Department during the Bush administration rewrote what they described as “reasonable Reagan-era” regulations. The Reagan-era regulations said firearms could be brought into the park if they were unloaded and properly stowed.
The revised regulation, finalized in January, permitted loaded and concealed firearms in the parks.
John Waterman, president of the United States Park Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the new regulation appeared to have been written in a rush.
The new regulation, he said, was so poorly worded that its parameters were ambiguous.
The U.S. Park Ranger Lodge is the largest organization of U.S. park rangers in the country.
In her ruling Kollar-Kotelly, who sits on the U.S. District Court bench for the District of Columbia, said the Interior Department ignored substantial information “concerning the environmental impacts” of the regulations. She also called the process which the department used “astoundingly flawed.”
In a letter to then Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in April 2008, seven former directors of the National Park Service said there was no need to change the regulation.Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
