Trey Smith
On New Year's Day, a Park Ranger at Mount Rainier National Park was shot and killed by a man wanted for questioning in a shooting from the previous night. The ranger, Margaret Anderson, had set up a roadblock for a vehicle that had sped past a checkpoint where vehicles are supposed to chain up for driving in the snowy conditions. She was completely unaware that the man she was blocking was someone running from the law. When this fellow was forced to stop his vehicle, he got out and shot Anderson.
What I found interesting about the news report was the following:
The shooting renewed debate about a federal law that made it legal for people to take loaded weapons into national parks. The 2010 law made possession of firearms subject to state gun laws.Anyone who knows me knows that I don't have a high opinion of guns. Personally, I think they should be outlawed altogether. But as much as I have a negative opinion of guns, Wade's statement represents to me a spurious argument.
Bill Wade, the outgoing chair of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said Congress should be regretting its decision.
"The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now," said Wade.
The assailant, Benjamin Colton Barnes, didn't take his weapons to the park because it was legal! He was trying to evade the area police and was looking for a place to hide out. Does Wade honestly think that the fact that it is legal to bring loaded guns into the park caused Barnes to choose it over somewhere else? Does Wade honestly think that Barnes nixed several other locations because he didn't want to run afoul of the law?
Of course not!! That's an asinine position to take.
Consequently, while I certainly detest the law, in question, I also realize it had nothing to do with this specific situation. While our elected officials in the nation's capitol have a lot to feel bad about, they shouldn't being kicking themselves over this law in light of Anderson's murder.
I have been watching a (South) Korean drama (one of my foolish little addictions) and was amused by a plot line. A sort of Korean "Law and Order," the episode involved a bank robbery; the cops are astonished. "They had guns??? They must have been Americans," one says. (As it turns out they were Russian guns and the robbers "spoke Korean", so they couldn't have been Americans; no American could possibly speak Korean.)
ReplyDeleteOnce I was with a company that was relocating personnel to Canada as part of a merger. One of our engineers asked the HR rep how to import his guns. The guy just looked at him weirdly and said , "What is it with you Americans and your guns?"