AZCDL Alert: Debate on National Park Carry Extended

AZCDL Alert: Debate on National Park Carry Extended

The Department of the Interior (DOI) has extended the comment period on allowing lawful carry of firearms in National Parks until August 8, 2008. It was supposed to end on June 30, 2008. However pro-rights comments dwarfed the anti-liberty crowd and there are some, including some Congressmen, who don't like that. Here's a link to the letter from Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva and Senator Kahikana Akaka (Hawaii) that generated the delay:
http://www.npca.org/keep_parks_safe/pdf/Akaka-Grijalva-Extension_Letter-6_27_08.pdf

The delay was meant to allow the opponents of your liberty to organize against your right to keep and bear arms in National Parks. Instead we will use the delay to continue pounding for carry in National Parks.

Spread this alert item on the Internet far and wide so we can get more and more gun owners to send in their comments. If we do that and drive our numbers up, we can continue to bury the other side with pro-liberty comments! If you have already contacted the Department of the Interior to allow carry in parks, please do it again!

To comment on the proposed rule, go here: http://tinyurl.com/5juwn3

For "Submitter's Representative," type in your Federal Representative's name. If you don't know who your Congressperson is go here: http://www.gunowners.org/cci.htm .

For "Agency Type," select: FEDERAL

For "Government Agency," select: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

The following is suggested "General Comment" text provided by our friends in the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL):

Pursuant to the US Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Dick Heller, both the existing and proposed National Park Service & National Wildlife Refuge weapons regulations are invalid, unconstitutional and void. The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and over 4 dozen co-petitioning organizations advised the Parks service of this as long ago as 2004. Since the holding in Heller is that their total ban on handguns infringes the Second Amendment, the Department of Interior and the National Park Service should accept the VCDL petition language as follows and implement the regulation immediately after the comment period closing.

Under existing legal doctrine, once a law is held unconstitutional, it is stricken; in the case of the park service CFR 36, regulation 2.4, it is almost exactly the same as the District of Columbia, and therefore void. Further, the Department of Interior proposed regulation with it's flawed "analogous state lands" language and is thereby also in violation since any state level bans on bearing arms in analogous state lands would also be implicated under Heller. The Department of the Interior is hereby instructed to immediately amend the current regulations pursuant to the VCDL petition language, copied below and the decision of the US Supreme Court rendered in Heller. The Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment is an individual right protecting the rights to keep arms and bear arms which supersedes CFR 36 regulation 2.4.

While I support the proposed change to permit loaded firearms / weapons in National Parks and Wildlife refuges, the proposed regulation should be amended as follows:

"A person may possess, carry, and transport loaded, and operable firearms or other weapons within a national park area in the same manner, and to the same extent, that a person may lawfully possess, carry, and transport loaded and operable firearms or other weapons in the state in which the federal park, or that portion thereof, is located, provided that such possession, carrying and transporting otherwise complies with applicable federal and state law."

And for National Wildlife Refuges:

"A person may possess, carry, and transport loaded, and operable firearms or other weapons within a national wildlife refuge area in the same manner, and to the same extent, that a person may lawfully possess, carry, and transport loaded and operable firearms or other weapons in the state in which the federal wildlife refuge, or that portion thereof, is located, provided that such possession, carrying and transporting otherwise complies with applicable federal and state law."

Information on legislation in Arizona can be found at the AzCDL website: http://www.azcdl.org/html/legislation.html

These alerts are a project of the Arizona Citizens Defense League (AzCDL), an all volunteer, non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization. Join today!

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