afterword by Patrick H. Moore
Although I was unaware that citizens are now allowed to carry firearms in our National Parks, it is apparently true based on the fact that an unidentified 3-year-old Idaho girl died on the shore of Yellowstone Lake at the Grant Village campground in Yellowstone National Park when she was shot with her father’s firearm.
Though authorities have declined to state whether the death was an accident, the tragedy was first reported when the girl’s mother called emergency personnel and said the girl had shot herself.
Sadly, emergency responders were unable to resuscitate the girl, according to park spokesperson Al Nash, who described the tragedy as “the kind of thing that isn’t supposed to happen here.”
According to the National Park Service, since 2010, people have been allowed to carry guns into national parks as long as federal, state and local firearms laws are met. The new law lifted a decades-old ban on the possession of firearms by visitors to most national parks, including Yellowstone.
The child’s fatal shooting death is the first to occur in Yellowstone since 1978, and the first shooting death of a child in the park since 1938, when the 13-year-old son of the park’s master mechanic accidentally shot himself in the head with a rifle. Oddly enough, Grant Village, where the girl was killed, is one of the more populated sections of the park and features a ranger station, stores, and other amenities.
Although hunting is permitted at a handful of national parks, including Grand Teton in Wyoming, according to the Park literature, hunting or even firing a gun is unlawful in Yellowstone.
A portion of the forested campsite where the shooting occurred remained cordoned off on Sunday as Yellowstone rangers and special agents with the National Park Service continued their investigation.
The legislation allowing visitors to carry guns in the parks was tacked on to a credit card bill passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama. The measure was backed by gun-rights proponents like the National Rifle Association, but opposed by groups representing park rangers and retired National Park Service employees. Supporters said it would provide uniformity to a patchwork of firearms regulations that allowed guns in public lands overseen by the U.S. Forest Service and federal Bureau of Land Management, but not in national parks and wildlife refuges.
Opponents said the law would heighten risks for visitors and park employees, embolden poachers and complicate prosecution of wildlife crimes.
Yellowstone, which was the first area designated a U.S. national park and is among the country’s most popular outdoor destinations, spans 2.2 million acres of pine forests, river valleys, mountain lakes and geysers in parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and attracts about 3 million visitors a year.
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This is just as bad as the recent story about the 8-year-old boy in the South who shot his elderly grandmother in the back of the head with her handgun while she was watching television. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to carry a firearm when visiting a place of pristine beauty such as Yellowstone (or any of our other glorious National Parks). After all, the last time I checked you’re not allowed to shoot Smokey. Of course, that too may change as our national obsession with shooting people and anything else that moves becomes more and more fixed in our convoluted national psyche.