Do guns belong in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park?

Conservation and environmental groups say no; the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates say yes. And both sides are currently fighting over a proposed change in regulations that would allow citizens to carry concealed weapons into national parks.

Reagan-era rules drafted in 1983 prohibit loaded guns in national parks. The regulations had gone untouched until last December, when Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne received a letter signed by the NRA and 51 U.S. senators asking him to reopen them. The reason, the NRA says, is that the regulations currently on the books don’t reflect the drastic changes in conceal and carry laws that have developed over the years.

“(In 1983), there were only six states across the country with right to carry laws. Twenty-five years later, there are 48 states with some form of conceal and carry. Yet, there’s this patchwork of different laws throughout the states,” said NRA spokeswoman Ashley Varner.

Under the proposed changes, each park would abide by the laws of the state in which it resides. That will make it easier for the concealed weapon permit holders to follow the rules, Varner said.

“We didn’t think that (current regulations were) fair for law abiding people who just want to know and understand the laws and be able to move through forest lands,” she said.

Organizations that advocate for the national parks — like the National Parks Conservation Association — are up in arms about the proposed changes. Greg Kidd, an NPCA spokesman, calls them “a fix to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

“The current regulations ... have been on the books since the Reagan administration, and they’ve worked perfectly well. There have been no known public complaints about this,” he said.

The right to different views

The opposing sides of the issue both base their arguments partly on ideology. Supporters of gun rights say the issue is one of individual civil liberties, and that the right to carry should extend to most all situations.

“I really feel strongly for the rights of people with conceal and carry permits,” said Mark Rogers, treasurer for the WNC Sportsmen’s Club, an organization of hunters.

But many park supporters say the inherent qualities of national parks make them a place where all should be on equal footing, and weapons shouldn’t be allowed.

“Parks are supposed to be different. They’re not supposed to be like everything else. People go to parks to get away from things in everyday life, and you don’t want to be wondering if people are carrying weapons,” said Bill Wade, spokesman for the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, a group that has come out in opposition to the proposed changes.

“National parks are sacred places, and it’s hard to imagine someone wanting to bring a concealed weapon into a place of worship,” agreed Kidd. “We don’t have any problem with the idea of firearms in general — it’s just that national parks are these kind of unique places.”

But the issue extends beyond ideology. Both sides have a cohesive set of arguments in support of their cause.

For many the most important concern is safety. Two recent high-profile incidents — the murders of hikers in the Pink Beds hiking area in Transylvania County and in Blood Mountain, Ga. — caused the issue of safety in national parks to be brought to the forefront. Both these incidents were in national forests — where guns and hunting are allowed — but they did raise the question of personal safety for people visiting wilderness areas.

Those kinds of incidents are exceedingly rare, however, argue opponents of the proposed changes.

“If you look at the statistics, there are very few instances happening in national parks where anyone’s life is threatened that you would need a weapon like that,” said Tom Massie, a Jackson County commissioner who is a concealed weapon permit holder and hunter, but who doesn’t agree with the proposed changes.

“Crime rates are just incredibly low in national parks. You could come up with any number of hypothetical scenarios that describe horrible situations, but let’s be real and look at the reality of the situation,” agreed Kidd.

In 2007, there was one aggravated assault and one robbery reported in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which spans 500,00 acres in North Carolina and Tennessee. Since 2003, there have been two reported homicides.

Wade said a fellow ranger who worked 15 years in Sequoyah-King’s Canyon National Park in California saw three reported rapes that entire time in contrast to seven instances of people being struck by lightning.

“The data that’s been accumulated show clearly that National Park Service areas are among the safest places in the country to be,” Wade said.

But the NRA says the safety issue is one of the top reasons it asked for the regulations to be changed to allow guns. Varner says that in the past several years, there has been a spate of drug-smuggling incidents in national parks.

“People can go under the cover of darkness or in the backwoods territory. There’s not a lot of policing going on because it’s deserted. (Smugglers) run up on campers and hikers,” she said.

Kempthorne has testified to Congress that the Park Service has had to permanently close off some areas of the forest as a result of drug running.

Sketchy, shadowy characters lurking in the forest might be a rarity, but it’s not impossible, Rogers says — though he admits that during years of hiking, he’s rarely felt unsafe.

“Just because you’re in a national forest like that doesn’t mean there’s not bad people around,” he said.

Brian MacMahan, chairman of the Jackson County commissioners and avid hunter, said he’d want the ability to defend himself from people — or wildlife — if the situation came down to it.

MacMahan says that if he was traveling on the remote stretch of U.S. 441 that stretches from Cherokee to Gatlinburg through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and his car happened to break down, he’d want the option of a loaded firearm.

“You’re vulnerable and there’s a potential of robbers and people that might assault you. What if wildlife — or a bear or something — came along? You can never tell, and I wouldn’t want to be out on the side of 441 if something happened with no way to protect myself,” he said.

Particularly with the sparse number of park rangers, who are typically already overworked.

“The rangers are spread so thin, a ranger might be a hundred miles from you and take three hours to get there,” MacMahan says.

“When you can’t defend yourself and there’s no police within earshot, it’s not right to allow a law-abiding individual to go unprotected,” said Varner.

No need for guns

Opponents of allowing guns in parks, on the other hand, say basing something on the one in a million chance of it happening isn’t realistic.

“I’ve been camping in the national parks now for 40 years, and I’ve never had the illusion that I’ve personally needed a gun,” said Massie. “There are instances that occur, but they’re extremely rare in terms of confrontation between other individuals or running in to a demented individual. This is not downtown Atlanta where you feel threatened — there’s not a great potential for anything strange happening.”

Indeed, allowing guns in the parks could actually create more of a danger than there currently is. For one, it would be a disadvantage to those not carrying, says John Edwards of Cashiers, a member of the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance.

“It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t want those crazies up there when I’m in the park with their guns in their pocket. The average person is not a gun carrier. It has no advantage at all to us,” he said.

“I just don’t think that the general public is going to want to go for an excursion on a ranger-guided walk wondering whether the person right next to them has got a concealed weapon,” Wade agreed.

And the risk for accidents can increase when more guns are involved.

“You can always have the opportunity for increased confrontation amongst backcountry users in the national park whether you’re camping, hiking, or horseback riding, and if any alcohol is involved, then you have the potential for a problem,” Massie said.

“It is a very heavily utilized area, and that may increase the potential to have an accident from the use of firearms,” added David Bates, head of the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance.

Whose forest is it?

Weapons could also pose a danger to wildlife, some argue. While “you’ve always got that element that’s going to take advantage of something,” as Rogers puts it, poaching could increase as the number of guns do.

And it could make poaching more difficult for rangers to regulate. For one, they wouldn’t necessarily know who to suspect.

“If a law enforcement ranger comes upon someone with a firearm today in a national park, of course that would lead the law enforcement officer to question what they’re doing with a firearm,” said Kidd. “The officer could choose to take action right then and there.”

If guns become legal, it might be harder to tell if someone is engaging in illegal behavior.

And guns could lead to snap — and erroneous — judgment calls. For instance, if someone encountered a bear, said Bates, someone not experienced in the backcountry might decide the best thing to do is pull out a gun and fire at the animal, without knowing if the bear actually poses a risk. They usually don’t, Bates said.

Varner, though, says it should be up to the individual to make the call.

“What is essentially at stake here is allowing campers, hikers and families traveling in deserted areas where they’re running into dangerous wildlife like bears, mountain lions and coyotes — to let these good, honest people simply be allowed to defend themselves.”

Some also argue that an increase in illegal hunting and poaching isn’t likely. Hunters generally have a deep respect for wildlife and want to play fair, says MacMahan.

“That’s the thing — as sportsmen, you want poachers and people who violate the law to be issued citations,” he said.

And hunters are well aware of the consequences of practicing their sport illegally.

“There are already laws on hunting in national parks. That’s already on the books and everybody knows that. If that did happen, they would face stiff fines and probably be banned from the park,” said Rogers.

Plus, most concealed weapons are useless for hunting, says MacMahan.

“The type of concealed weapon that we’re talking about people carrying, there’s very little hunting with. They’re mostly for personal protection,” he said. “And given what I know, most handgun owners are not going to pull their gun out and target shoot on federal property.”

Confusing laws

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in particular poses a sort of paradox. For one, it straddles two different states.

“The Great Smoky Mountains park lies in two different states, and a number of other parks cross state boundaries as well. For the general public and visitors, it’s going to be more confusing than it is now. The laws in the states that allow for conceal and carry vary considerably from one state to another,” says Wade.

But Varner, of the NRA, doesn’t agree that confusion would be a factor.

“I think that’s a bogus argument,” she said. “Our park rangers know the laws. They are fully capable of understanding where they are within the forest.”

A major question is whether the same laws that currently apply to state forest lands would apply to national parks. Those vary from state to state. In North Carolina, one cannot carry a concealed weapon onto national forest land. Tennessee laws also prohibit this, but there is a bill currently in the state’s legislature to allow concealed weapons in national forests.

And if concealed guns were permitted in national parks, some worry that state forests could be soon behind.

“I think national parks set a precedent that we don’t want to see,” says Bates of the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance.

As of now, politicians who preside over the areas occupied by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have contradicting opinions on whether to allow concealed weapons.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) doesn’t want the law changed.

“I haven’t seen any need to change the federal law,” said Alexander.

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), however, supports the proposed changes.

“I strongly support every American’s Second Amendment rights. I believe those rights should extend to our national parks, just as they do to lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service.”

A 60-day public comment period on the proposed regulation changes opened April 30. The public is invited to weigh in at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/E8-9606.htm.