As a strong supporter of the country’s National Parks System, I just don’t see a logical reason why anyone would want to carry a concealed weapon into such naturally beautiful places like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Redwoods, Crater Lake, Grand Teton or any of the national parks.
Is someone seriously afraid of being accosted or robbed by Old Faithful or El Capitan? Are there criminals hiding out in the Petrified Forest?
These places should be off limits to such practices because of the presence of children. Just because you have the right to pack heat on a vacation doesn’t mean you should.
Chuck Bloom
Plano, Texas
… but what about the children?
August 21, 2009
[A extraordinary clear example of scrambled thinking on the gun issue. Perhaps the reason he doesn’t see a logical reason for carrying a gun in the national parks is because he is severely logic impaired.
What does being “a strong supporter of the country’s National Parks System” or their natural beauty have to do with concluding there is no “logical reason” to carry a concealed weapon?
Even his straw-men of “being accosted or robbed by Old Faithful or El Capitan” is extraordinarily weak.
Criminal do their thing where they have the opportunity, means, and high probability of accomplishing their goal. If their thing involves robbing or hurting people the remote location and disarmed status of their victims in the remote parks can be good hunting grounds. One does not have life insurance for only when their risk is high, such as when traveling by car. They have life insurance for all occasions. And so it is with carrying defensive tools. If you knew you were going to be attacked you wouldn’t go there. But you don’t know so you carry defensive tools wherever and whenever you can. And not all of the threats are human:
Sign in Glacier National Park
Bear in Glacier National Park.
And finally, “because of the presence of children”? Come on, can any anti-gun person offer a plausible defense for that statement? Do children not need to be defended against violent attacks? Is it better to let them be injured or killed than for them to see a bear get shot? Is it better for them to see their mother raped and/or killed than to see the attacker stopped in his tracks by a gun in the hands of his or her parents?
I actually did use my gun while hiking through a state park with my kids several years ago. There was a rattlesnake near the edge of the trail. It was a threat both to us and other hikers that perhaps would not have seen and avoided it. From a safe distance I put a 9mm FMJ bullet through it’s head. The kids did not seem to have suffered any short or long term adverse effects from the use of the gun in their presence. They even seemed relieved after the threat was neutralized.–Joe]
Remember, if you are out with the kids, and meet a bear, you don’t have to outrun the bear….
Quit looking at me like that!
Joe, we were in Cody, WY this summer. At the Buffalo Bill exhibit there was a ‘How to Get Along With the Bears’ display which was very high tech. In it they had an advocate of the use of Pepper Spray (in the Giant size $50.00 can) and they even demonstrated how effective it was…against a trained griz…on a calm day…when the attacked knew the bear was coming…and it advanced at a walk. . .
on the other hand. . .
a week or so after we returned there was news from a small town about 30 miles north of Cody of a former NJ policeman who was attacked in the tall sage by a griz, he dilivered three shots with a .41 mag and killed it, twasn’t a trained bear. He did suffer some injury as the bear attacked from cover and from behind.
Never did find out the load he was using, but I’d rather carry my .44 than seasoning…, actually I’d rather carry my 45-70, but it’s a tad harder to conceal.
I have a concealed permit and will be receiving one form Utah shortly, but I didn’t carry in YNP, although the natives seemed friendly…the pickin’s were ripe.
DTM
Between 2002 and 2007, there were 63 homicides in national parks, 240 rapes or attempted rapes, 309 robberies, 37 kidnappings and 1,277 aggravated assaults, according to National Park Service statistics.
The article can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/28/GR2008022800363.html
(Because I am HTML-tarded, I can’t format it into a link.)
A remote trailhead can be a dangerous place. Even if you believe you don’t need the gun in the backcountry because, for example, you are in Colorado or New Mexico or Arizona where there are no Grizzlies, you may face dangerous 2-legged predators when you return to the trailhead late in the day, perhaps in low light conditions when you are dog tired. If you left your gun in the car you won’t have a chance to get it before it is too late. Besides, even though the Griz are pretty much confined to Northern Wyomng, Idaho and Montana, cougars are everywhere. And speaking of children, they are a cougar favorite. So much so you may not be able to stop their approach by any means other than a well-placed bullet.
The Desolation Wilderness area out of South Lake Tahoe had one of the highest crime rates in the nation for a number of years. Being relatively close to the S. Lake Tahoe casino district it became a bedroom for low income types and a hunting ground for 2 legged predators favorite prey, unwary tourists. Mostly assault and robbery, but also rape and the occasional murder it has it all. It seems most people turn off whatever situational awareness when they get out in “nature”.
after reading this article in high country news, i’d look at the national park service stats as minimums:
http://www.hcn.org/issues/347/17026
I was down in the canyon that weekend and it was hard to tell which was causing the most heartburn among the residents, the murder itself or the pressure from being applied to keep people from talking to the investigators.
“It seems most people turn off whatever situational awareness when they get out in “nature”.”
Yeah, but we should crank it up to “10”. Besides; you see more interesting things that way– more wildlife and such, and it makes for a better experience. When my kids were younger, they’d often wonder how I was spotting all those deer, or whatever.
“Just lookin’ around.”
Chuck;
you can google basic html href. I found this page right away. Scroll to the bottom of that page and you’ll find an explanation of the href, or A HREF as he calls it. I’d spell it out here, but the blog software thinks I’m making a real link and doesn’t show the code.
I can write it as text, but this might be misconstrued;
left-carrot a space href equals quote URL unquote right carrot [text as link here] left carrot forward slash a right carrot. It’s shown almost complete just above the comment entry box below on this page.
Alternatively, you can “view”, “source” on any web page and find the href code.
I have relatives in the Rockies. My first visit to their 40 acres of heaven, my daughter nearly stepped on a rattle snake while out walking with me. It was not aggressive, just defensively rattling, so we left it alone. Back at the house, I asked our hosts what their protocol was regarding rattlers and told them we met one.
My sister in law asked me to kill any I saw, because a bitten dog or horse costs over $1000 in vet fees for antiserum and other treatment, and they have several of both, as well as visitors with kids.
So getting rid of rattlers is now SOP on visits to the relatives. While a rock or two will work, a birdshot 22LR cartridge in my Beretta 21A is also easy to carry around their property.
Oh, c’mon. Not the “omigodbearsbearbearsandchillllldrunnnnnnnn” line, Joe.
I carry in public lands because I have the 2A right to do so. I don’t cherry pick fears or stories to justify that. If I was concerned about anything based on actual experience it’d be a) crazy mean-ass dogs running wild. And b) crazy mean-ass people, especially the illegal aliens who are using America’s parks as their hideouts. I occasionally have a concern about c) cougar, though the last cougar I saw I sang an Insane Clown Posse song at, in my best Hatchet impression. It frowned and got out of there fast. Demonstrating yet again that cougars are smarter than your average Juggalo. But I digress.
But BEARS killing CHILDRUNNNNNN?
Doods, you wanna cherry pick the horror stories you need to prime the testosterone pump, that’s your biz. But if I’m shooting anything out there it’s FUCKING DOGS. (And they don’t have to be fucking, budabump.)
I don’t know why half you people even bother to go into the back country. “Ooo, ooo, it might bite my horse or dog and cost me money so KILL KILL KILL!” Christ. I’ve been bitten more fucking times by DOGS running loose in packs than by rattlesnakes (6 to 0 is the current count). And twice been kicked by stupid stupid crazy-ass horses so inbred, badly trained, and abused that they were twitchier than a horny Mormon at a Pride parade. Only part of a rattler I’ve ever seen is its rattle…as it slithers off into the brush.
I *do* carry in the backcountry, but bears and cougar and rattlesnakes are the least of my worries. And I don’t need to fabricate or cherry pick Dangerous Dangerous Nature Out There Lurking To Kill The Chillllldrunnnnn to justify carrying.
All this effort to create the straw man of Dangerous Dangerous Nature to justify our RKBA plays into the Chuck Bloom mindset: either nature is this completely safe Repository of Beauty (unlike the hell-anus that is Plano, so people have to fabricate an idealized nature), or it’s this great huge threat (another idealization for a different set of reasons).
NO! I carry because I have the Second Amendment right to do so, and because it’s the adult thing to do. Like carrying the Ten Essentials, a Leatherman, and extra water.
Maid Marian,
You make some excellent points. But he stated he could not think of a logical reason why one would want to carry. “Because it is my right” is a not as strong of a reason to most people as “I want to defend myself and my family”.