Interior Permits Guns in the National Parks

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

Honorable Friends:

In its waning days, the Bush administration has at last given us something to celebrate. And no, I am not simply referring to its imminent departure. Today, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Lyle Laverty, announced new regulations recognizing an individual’s right to bear arms in the national parks and wildlife refuges.

According to the announcement, the new rule, “would allow an individual to carry a concealed weapon in national parks and wildlife refuges if, and only if, the individual is authorized to carry a concealed weapon under state law in the state in which the national park or refuge is located.” Congratulations Coloradans; all you need to do to carry a concealed handgun in the national parks here is to obtain a concealed carry permit recognized in Colorado. Just don’t try it in states which refuse to recognize our permits—such as the entire Left Coast.

This is a rather major development. Previously, possession of a loaded firearm in a national park or wildlife refuge was strictly forbidden by law since 1983. The former regulations demanded that any firearm be kept unloaded, in a locked case, in some inaccessible part of your vehicle, such as the trunk, in order to enter a national park with it at all.

The new changes came about as Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne responded to letters from 51 Senators (Letter 1 / Letter 2) of both parties who pointed out that 48 states now have concealed carry laws and our federal regulations should be updated to reflect that change. Occasionally, even Senators do manage to say something sensible, and it seems Secretary Kempthone agreed.

Naturally, this change in the rules did not come without substantial opposition and, in the published rule, the Department of Interior took the opportunity to respond to many of the concerns raised during the lengthy 90 day comment period. For instance, environmentalists will be pleased to know that most studies conclude that the vast majority of concealed weapons permit holders are not, in fact, poachers. Rather, they tend to carry their weapons for purposes of self defense, and are well aware that any improper use of a firearm is still a punishable offense. The Interior goes on to admit that violent crime is on the rise in national parks, especially near the border and in remote areas, with 8 murders, 43 rapes, 57 robberies, and 274 instances of aggravated assault in 2007. The Department also warns that the mere 3000 officers it has patrolling the millions of remote acres in our national parks cannot possibly guarantee safety. Thus, having a weapon of self defense may not be such a bad idea.

The year 2008 has been good for gun rights and the Second Amendment. First, Justice Scalia gave us the highly entertaining opinion in the District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court affirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms, overturning the D.C. handgun ban. Now we have the Interior opening the national parks to concealed carry permit holders. If you are still looking for stocking stuffers, I cannot think of any better way to commemorate this remarkable year than purchasing handgun training courses for you and your loved ones in preparation for the concealed carry permit application. What better way to ensure a ‘safe’ and happy holiday season?

On Heller

By Julian Dunraven

Today, virtually every newspaper and broadcaster across the nation has been trumpeting the news that we have a newly expressed fundamental freedom: an individual right to keep and bear arms, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in The District of Columbia v. Heller. If you woke up this morning breathing a bit easier and feeling a little more free, that is why. What every article and story will tell you is that the Court struck down the D.C. handgun ban. However, most stories seem to be missing two important points: the opinion was quite funny, and it went a lot further than people seem to be grasping.

Justice Scalia wrote for the majority. To read his opinion is to be transported back to grade school, listening to your teacher patiently instruct you on basic grammar. If you ever wondered what use it was to learn all those annoying rules governing punctuation, Scalia will be happy to explain how one of your basic rights rests upon the use of three commas in the Second Amendment.

The amendment reads: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Throughout, the opinion, Scalia expounds on the use of those commas, the differences between prefatory and operative clauses, and even goes so far as to dissect and rearrange the Amendment as a grammar school teacher might demonstrate to his students while diagramming sentences. Remember those sentence diagrams? He then instructs us as to the differences between singular and plural, the use of verbs and their objects, modifiers, prepositions, and idiomatic usage. English teachers everywhere should be rejoicing.

In the footnotes, scattered throughout, one can imagine that Teacher Scalia has just been interrupted during lecture by a question from a student-a particularly annoying little boy who bears a strong resemblance to a miniature Justice Stevens. Scalia, like any good teacher, generally responds by patiently explaining why his pupil's assumptions are mistaken. Occasionally though, like all good teachers driven to distraction by particularly annoying students, Scalia offers a sharp rebuke, openly speculating as to whether Justice Stevens might have leapt through the looking glass to study law with the Mad Hatter. He also describes Stevens' grasp of the English language as "dead wrong," "an absurdity," and "grotesque." Judging from Scalia's remarks, by the time I got to the dissent I was expecting to find near illiterate ravings.

For example, here is a small sample of the opinion as Scalia responded to Stevens' contention that "bear arms" did not just mean "to carry weapons or armor" but "to carry weapons in a military context."

In any event, the meaning of "bear arms" that petitioners and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby "bear arms" connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving "bear Arms" its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war--an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the
Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase "keep and bear Arms" would be incoherent. The word "Arms" would have two different meanings at once: "weapons" (as the object of "keep") and (as the object of "bear") one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying "He filled and kicked the bucket" to mean "He filled the bucket and died." Grotesque.

He also remarks that:

A purposive qualifying phrase that contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some courses on Linguistics). If "bear arms" means, as we think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit the purpose of the carriage ("for the purpose of selfdefense" or "to make war against the King"). But if "bear arms" means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add "for the purpose of killing game." The right "to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game" is worthy of the mad hatter.

In any case, Scalia manages to save the English language from being tortured and ravaged by Justice Stevens. As a result, we now have a solidly expressed individual right to keep and bear arms defined by a most amusing opinion. We have quite a bit more than that too.

Most articles are reporting that Scalia's opinion preserves gun control laws regarding schools, certain public places, and bans on automatic weapons. This is not precisely true. The opinion simply states that those items were not at issue before the Court and will therefore be presumed to be valid until specifically contested. Yet the Court just issued a very broad embrace of an individual right to keep and bear arms, especially in the interest of self defense. Moreover, it also adopted, as a standard for protected weaponry, that which is "in common use at the time." The only limit the Court articulated was to say that, "that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes."

In the dicta, Scalia acknowledged that, as standard issue for our infantry, M-16s might be protected. However, as they are not commonly used by the citizenry, they might not be protected. As he points out toward the end of the opinion, the Court only expressed a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms. He openly invites further lawsuits to help determine just how far that right may go-much to the chagrin of the dissenting Justices who rightly see a flurry of litigation coming and the probable overturning of a good number of longstanding regulations.

This is an exciting time, the first formal expression of a right we have had for 200 years. I look forward to seeing how we develop this right. In the meantime, teachers, you now have solid evidence which to prove to your truculent students that good grammar can lead to greater freedom.

Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.