Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign is whining about the National Park rule change that allows some of us to defend ourselves using firearms in National Parks. They filed the lawsuit and one of the biggest whines is:
On April 3, 2008, the National Park Service’s Chief of Environmental Quality, Jacob Hoogland, warned that the rule “required additional NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] analysis” and that “at minimum an Environmental Assessment should be prepared on the proposed revision to the existing firearms regulation.”
In the same vein, Michael Schwartz, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chief of Policy and Directives Management, warned on May 14, 2008 that “The rule was published before they did any NEPA analysis. Last week, I pointed out that this is a procedural flaw.”
Paul, technically that may be true. I’m sorry my former governer Dirk Kempthorne didn’t dot that particular ‘i’. Let me do it for him now, “Environmental Assessment of the rule change: No affect.”
Now stop your whining and grow up.
Actually, if you read the rule change, they explicitly said that. Something along the lines of “There is no need for an environmental impact study, because there is no possible environmental impact.”
Guns are good for the enviorment.
Hell, if you take it one step farther, by Helmke’s own admission, the parks are inherently safe enough to walk around without carrying a firearm for self-defense. As such, no one carrying a firearm would necessarily use a firearm, and thus no impact.
That, and the whole CDC determination that firearm-related lead makes no impact on anything…
In any case, relying on the argument of procedural compliance to make your case is just plain sad.
This is just one tiny example of how seemingly unrelated programs, and entities such as the EPA, are used as tools to promote and advance leftist politics.
We need an opposition party, and the Republicans certainly are not it.