Wrong target

President Reagan’s administration banned easily accessible, loaded guns from national parks where hunting is not allowed. That seemed logical: It decreased the risk of violent encounters among visitors, improved safety for park rangers and reduced the likelihood of poaching. Today, the parks, monuments and recreation sites overseen by various divisions of the Department of the Interior are among the safest places in the nation. Statistically, visitors stand a better chance of being hit by lightning than of becoming victims of violent crime. And yet in the world of gun lobbying, no place is safe from irrationality, as Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has demonstrated with his proposal to end the 25-year ban.

Currently, visitors who bring guns to the parks must unload them and place them somewhere out of easy reach, such as in a car trunk. Under new rules proposed by Kempthorne, people who have permits for concealed weapons would be allowed to carry them in national parks if the state in which the park is located so allows. This would create a hodgepodge of policies that would be a nightmare to enforce. Take Death Valley National Park, which straddles Nevada and California. California prohibits loaded and accessible guns in its national parks, and Nevada does not. Visitors carrying guns could break the law simply by entering the wrong part of the park.

It’s difficult to ascertain what problem Kempthorne seeks to fix with this needless, clumsy rule change. Most park visitors have not campaigned for a repeal, and crime is so low that the self-defense argument is almost as irrelevant as it is cliche. Nor has there been a frightening spate of bear attacks or standoffs with angry deer.

No, the only assault on park visitors is coming from the gun lobby. The National Rifle Assn. and other lobbyists are beating their chests during an election year. For voters, the failing economy, a mortgage crisis, an interminable war in Iraq, the regrouping of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and fears of global warming have all overshadowed the right to shoot at trees. Yet Kempthorne is allowing the NRA to create an issue where none exists. Indeed, the enforcement problems created by his proposal are so glaring that it’s tempting to believe there’s an ulterior motive: Make rules that are not easily enforced, and the NRA succeeds in spreading gun toting, this time into national parks. Next up, college campuses.

The Interior Department will be accepting public comment on the proposal through June. We can only hope that the millions of park visitors, rangers, law enforcement agencies and conservationists who strongly oppose this repeal will contact Kempthorne and remind him that the gun lobby is not his only constituency.