[Pangloss62]

Some of you may know that I work for the National Park Service, so when I see the NPS in the news, I take notice. At the risk of being called a fascist again, I submit that today's NYT editorial board got it right about guns and George "Welcome to the real Virgina" Allen:

November 22, 2006
Editorial
A Parting Shot From George Allen

As a last little gift to America, Senator George Allen, who was narrowly
defeated by James Webb this month, has introduced what may be his final
piece of legislation: a bill that would allow the carrying of concealed
weapons in national parks. The argument behind the bill is that national
park regulations unfairly strip many Americans of a right they may enjoy
outside the parks. The bill has passed to the Senate Committee on Energy
and Natural Resources, where we hope it will die the miserable death it
deserves.

Americans' confusion about the Second Amendment is now nearly total. An
amendment that ensures a collective right to bear arms has been misread in
one legislature after another -often in the face of strong public
disapproval- as a law guaranteeing an individual's right to carry a weapon in public. And, in a perversion of monumental proportions, the battle to extend that right has largely succeeded in co-opting the language of the
Civil Rights movement, so that depriving an American of the right to carry
a gun in public sounds, to some, as offensive as stripping him of the right
to vote. Senator Allen's bill is, of course, being cheered by the gun
lobby, which sees it not as an assault on public safety but as a way of
nationalizing the armed paranoia that the National Rifle Association and
its cohorts stand for.

If Americans want to feel safer in their national parks, the proper
solution is to increase park funding, which has decayed steadily since the
Bush administration took office. To zealots who believe that the Second
Amendment trumps all others, the parks are merely another badland, like
schools and church parking lots, that could be cleaned up if the carrying
of private weapons were allowed. The concealed-weapon advocates are doing an excellent job of sounding terrified by "lonely wilderness trails." But
make no mistake. Senator Allen's bill would make no one safer. It can only
endanger the public.