How far will the National Rifle Association go to overthrow gun control measures? Apparently infiltrating groups who favor gun control isn't out of the question. Among the groups infiltrated? Apparently the National Parks Conservation Association.
Mother Jones magazine, in a story published Wednesday, reports that a woman known as Mary McFate has over the years worked undercover as an NRA mole who infiltrated gun control groups. Among the more recent targets was NPCA, which has been working for months against efforts by Interior Department officials to overturn gun regulations pertaining to weapons in the National Park System.
Under the current guidelines, weapons owned by licensed gun owners can be brought into the parks, but they have to be broken down and stored out of easy reach. Earlier this year, however, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed to replace that regulation with one that would allow park visitors to arm themselves around the clock if the laws of the state in which the park in question is found allowed.
What's not been answered is how rangers in park units that span multiple states -- such as Yellowstone, Death Valley, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Great Smoky Mountains -- would police gun laws if this proposal were embraced.
A source for the Mother Jones story, Barbara Hohlt, executive director of States United to Prevent Gun Violence, told the magazine that Ms. McFate's ears perked up when she heard about NPCA's opposition to the change.
McFate also took a keen interest in a gun matter currently under consideration by the Department of the Interior, Hohlt says. At the urging of the gun lobby, the agency has been mulling whether to change its regulations to allow people to carry loaded and concealed guns into national parks under certain circumstances. (At the moment, a gun carried into a national park must be unloaded and kept apart from ammunition.) The National Parks Conservation Association and current and former National Park Service officials have been fighting the proposed rule change. "When Mary heard about this," Hohlt recalls, "she immediately asked to be on the email list [of the opponents] and she also got on the phone calls. So she now knows the strategy of the people trying to fight this."
NPCA officials, understandably, are aghast at the possibility that their private deliberations have been overheard by a spy possibly working for the NRA. In a statement issued this afternoon the park advocacy group confirmed that Ms. McFate "has participated in multiple confidential conversations and email correspondence over the past few months about efforts to keep visitors and wildlife safe in our national parks."
Bryan Faehner, NPCA's legislation representative, adds that, "If the investigation by Mother Jones proves true, then the NRA will have effectively spied on our ongoing efforts to keep visitors and wildlife safe in our national parks. If true, this is a troubling display of the lengths to which the NRA will go to further its agenda."
Comments
Legal concealed carry permit holders have passed background checks and received training on safe firearm procedures. With concealed carry, criminals, stalkers and thieves do not know who is armed. No one knows. I carry when legal to protect my family. When guns are banned, criminals are aware that their victims are defenseless. Cell phones don't work,and make individuals especially vulnerable in remote areas. There have been murders in a number of national parks where victims were selected because they were defenseless. National parks are places where legal concealed carry should be encouraged not feared.
Indeed the courts have spoken but not to the extent whereby the right of "self protection" extends beyond one's person residence, as stated clearly in the DC decision, and not, as others have tried erroneously to claim on this website, to the extent that your "personal residence" is inclusive or any temporary shelter you erect. You'll have a difficult time making a case that the justice's ruling, paraphrasing here, carries with it the intent of the law to include any and all structures inhabited by people as one's "residence". Before you go off on an emotional retort, consider these options and label them as residence or not: tree house, duck blind, tree/deer stand, ice cabin (also known as lake tent for those of you not familiar with the sport of ice fishing), lean to, ice cave (a most common occurrence on the shores of the Great Lakes from Dec-Feb), we can continue as long as you like. Please spare me the banter that they all qualify.......does anyone propose that there exists someone who lives with a duck blind as their mailing address?
Interesting also that the gun lobby claims that people with CCP's and the like will actually enhance my park experience, becoming my guardian angel should tough times arise. I thought this manner of vigilantism was exactly what we're trying to prevent? Self-protection, as stated within the 2nd Amendment does NOT give anyone the right to travel the land as judge, jury and executioner, under ANY circumstances. The last thing this country needs is a gun-toting mobile militia.........why not just become a bounty hunter if you're all geared up about protecting society? Or is that too dangerous for you?
I vehemently disagree with the notion that compromise is unattainable. But one side has to get over their superiority complex about protection of all mankind being their right, and the other side has to get beyond the fact that our nation will never be totally free from gun violence, be it criminal or accidental from legal ownership. The easy solution is to outlaw all firearms, whereby anyone in possession would automatically be identified as a criminal element, and subjected to all manner of cruel and unusual punishment just for being in possession, or even having one's fingerprints found on a weapon. But since we all agree that the simple solution is beyond our willingness to alleviate the overall problem of gun violence, we need to consider other alternatives. But concealed permit holders wandering the country in a 21st C manner akin to Old West posse or Southern lynch mob mentality justice doesn't fill the bill either. And that, we should all fear, is the hidden agenda of the NRA and their campaign of constant disinformation.
Hi Lone Hiker,
I believe you just made my point for me. Thanks, Bob
Why is the gun the issue and not drugs, alcohol, poverty, cars, knives, violent crime, etc.? Compromise is attainable if the issue is violence rather than a single method with which to exercise violence.
Crime includes numerous weapons beyond guns, and we will never eliminate weapons from the criminally inclined. Discuss the causes of violence and pose solutions to the cause and as I said compromise might be attainable. Frankly statistics just don't support the emotional out cry against legal ownership of a single vehicle of violent crime. Of course in a binary world YMMV.
=8^)
The fact that millions of like minded citizens are armed while so many liberals are not makes me feel much more confident that my personal freedoms will be protected. I bet we would all like to ban something from the parks. I for one would like to ban the socially liberal estrogen rich guys on these posts who are so frightened of handguns. I know for a fact that would make my park experience much more pleasant.
Much better to have the drug dealers, rapists, and murderers armed in our
national parks and the law abiding public helpless to defend ourselves
against the threat. The criminals certainly prefer it this way, and since some
members of our government do to, they must also be criminals... but
I repeat myself.
Why? We're dealing with licensed CCL holders, a group historically proven to be more law-abiding and less violent than ANY similarly sized group in EVERY state that issues licenses.
Lone Hiker:
The Supreme Court decision also reaffirmed that the 2nd amendment is an Individual Right, (the more generalized and far reaching part of the ruling perhaps?) which is a more on the subject than the definition of 'residence' is in this case, in my opinion.
Another Voice for Freedom from Violence :
You can live in the world in terms of how you'd like to be, the rest of us will live in it as it is. Those more likely to have "devious schemes to undermine democracy" are those that yell "conspiracy" at every turn when individuals debate freely.