Who needs a gun in a National Park? Well.....

[mvccd1000]

AP IMPACT: Drug gangs taking over US public lands
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=azcentral&sParam=32926877.story

By Alicia A. Caldwell And Manuel Valdes, Associated Press Writers
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.

Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.

<snip>

About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.

The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Park, or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevada Mountains. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranch land.

<snip>

The Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking trails. It's the same situation in the nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks.

Many of the plots are encircled with crude explosives and are patrolled by guards armed with AK-47s who survey the perimeter from the ground and from perches high in the trees.

The farms are growing in sophistication and are increasingly cultivated by illegal immigrants, many of whom have been brought to the U.S. from Michoacan.

--------------

Wait! I thought National Parks were a "haven from violence" before the government recklessly allowed firearms in the parks? :sarcasm:

[depakid]

1. Oh boy, more bad guys to be afraid of!

[gorfle]

18. Well you know what they say,

"Ignorance is bliss"

[paulsby]

22. fear canard

take 1

[Arctic Dave]

2. Sounds more like reason to fund the park service, I doubt that was what you wanted to say though.

[mvccd1000]

5. I agree, and you're right...

... that wasn't the point I was making.

I do agree that better funding of the national parks (and possibly better control of who we let into the country) would be a much better idea than getting into a shootout with a drug gang.

I was merely making the point that national parks were not absolutely, by definition, "safe havens," as several posters here claimed.

[Sherman A1]

8. Agreed

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

33. Sounds like a good plan.

[sandnsea]

3. Uh, you don't want to open fire on drug operations

This is the last reason a person should use a gun in a national park. If you run across pot growers, you want to back away quietly and get the hell out of there.

It is also illegal to discharge a weapon in a national park so you couldn't start firing away at them anyway.

[mvccd1000]

6. That's for sure! I'd be going the other way in a hurry.

I simply offered up the article as a rebuttal to those who claimed that national parks are so completely safe that no person could ever have need of a gun in such a place.

Obviously there are people present in the parks who do not have the safety of the patrons as their primary goal.


(Oddly enough, this was never even my argument for guns in parks. I simply thought it was ridiculous to be able to drive down the same road in Arizona and go from non-criminal to criminal and back to non-criminal depending on who administered the land around me. The new rule eliminates that, and I support the change.)

[sandnsea]

20. If the gun isn't the answer for the situation

Then the argument remains. There is no reason to have a gun in a national park.

Unlike national forests, national park roads are usually self-contained within the park so there isn't as high a likelihood of going in and out of the park on a side road.

But since it is still illegal to discharge them in the park, that should help keep the drunked up nutballs to a minimum.

I was in a section of the county yesterday where there really isn't any law enforcement. There were a number of elderly folks, including elderly women living alone. There is no way I would say any of these folks shouldn't have a gun. That's reasonable, and hopefully responsible, gun ownership.

If gun rights advocates would stop acting like republicans, the differences could be easily worked out.

[PavePusher]

30. Just because the point is to avoid having to shoot...

does not mean that will be the outcome in all situations. And, as I point out below, a criminal with an "AK" is not, by definition, or even by implication, invulnerable.

Chances are the crims are poorly trained and their motivation will be highly variable. How many of them are there in a given situation? How alert are they? There are a multitude of factors involved, not all slanted against the legal Citizen.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

34. It is not illegal to discharge a firearm in self defense in a National Park.

[PavePusher]

9. It is not illegal to fire...

in self defense.

[paulsby]

23. it's not illegal

to discharge if done in self or other's defense

that's true everywhere

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

32. and if they have already seen you?

[Statistical]

35. Unlawful to discharge a weapon in all situations? LOL

Where do you guys get this stuff.

While there are provisions that make it unlawful to discharge a weapon they are designed to prevent accidents, nuisances, and poaching.

The laws aren't absolute as in defend yourself from death and you go to jail.
"We respect you acted in self defense BUT the law is the law and you need to go away for 5 to 10 Son".

There are laws in my city (Chesapeake, VA) which prohibit the discharge of firearm inside the city limits of course their are provisions for self defense.

[sandnsea]

36. It would be illegal to shoot at a drug operation

and you sure as hell wouldn't want to put yourself in a self-defense situation if you stumbled on a drug operation - so what good is the gun.

That's what I said.

[Pavulon]

37. Generally the situation is put on you..

in that case, where my life was at risk and no path to get out was offered sure I would shoot. Or shoot to open a door to get out. Shots that make people take cover are helpful in retreating.

[sandnsea]

39. So the law doesn't matter to you

That's your business.

I sure as hell wouldn't shoot at a drug operation. That is the damn dumbest thing anybody could do, and really would put your life at risk.

That's why I'm glad discharging weapons in national parks is still illegal. Most people won't play johnny dangerously and will only shoot if they are being attacked.

[Pavulon]

40. Yeppers, I ignored that bitch for years.

Carried a glock 17 up and down the appalachian trail for years. Never fired it. Now if someone had given me a reason to shoot them, IE met the legal criteria for self defense, I would have legally shot them. Then pled down the gun charge, if it was thrown at me.

I dont give a shit who it is, if someone is trying to kill me I reserve the right to resist violently. Drug operation or whatever.

I made that clear, I would have no reason to shoot at a person who was not trying to kill me. Stumbling on some fool growing weed is not a related to self defense.

[PavePusher]

41. You are ignoring the point.

If the conditions exist to make it a self-defense situation, it would be legal to shoot.

What part of that eludes you?

You wouldn't walk into a drug operation and start shooting randomly. You'd try to leave un-noticed, and the firearm would only come into play if the operators attacked or threatened you.

Why is this difficult?

[Newest Reality]

4. It seems that ...

the insane, paranoid, money-making, Dupont induced, African American fearing WAR ON WEEDS has taken a new turn for the worse, ey?

"It seems that, even in the 21st Century, with all their information and so-called enlightenment, they were easily manipulated by some irrational fear of a common weed that had, for centuries been considered magical, beneficial, and medicinal." -- Future Historian

We have to get off of that bullshit merry-ground before it becomes even more rabid and destructive. It is up to us, in that respect, by changing our viewpoints and illuminating our entire world with the truth of it.

What is most dangerous thing about pot? Obviously it is the people who consider it dangerous and pledge their lives and our precious resources to convincing us of that and eradicating its presence and usage, for they have something to gain from it even as we lose more and more in their crusade.

When you chose to intelligently inform today's younger folks about the substance, you find yourself honestly telling them to be careful and learn to be paranoid because, the fact is, the most dangerous thing about using it is that the big, bad anti-pot people are obsessed with protecting them and helping them avoid the demonic scourge of this horrific plant by PUTTING THEM IN PRISON FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME. That, I assure you is very dangerous and destructive to them, their mental and physical well-being, their future employment and status, not to mention the effect on their friends, spouses, family, loved ones, children, grandchildren, and fortune.

I guess you are better off being a felon than enduring the effects of smoking pot, ey? I mean, munchies, laughing at stupid shit, being a bit absent minded or lethargic and easy going are really destructive to our society, you know.

Really, think about it! Look at just how much money and manpower has been expended to erradicate this threat to our whole way of life and, even when the mask has fallen off and we see the leering, white, conservative corporate skull grimacing behind it in embrassement, we ARE STILL DEALING WITH THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT TODAY?

When do we want to try to even aspire towards something like being an enlightened society at all, anymore? Or do we? May I suggest that the criteria might have something to do with how we tolerate and see into our own manipulation to the point where the obvious becomes an accepted way to ascertain legality. We could let a person do anything to themselves with the caveat that it only becomes our problem when they do something factually and demonstrable destructive to someone else. Right now, we are playing on nothing more than propaganda and assumptions that have beoome a cultural dogma without substantial facts to support it. We are wasting so much based on nothing more than biased conjecture that has a specific and easily ascertained agenda.

We are now paying the huge and horrendous price for allowing any of this unfounded nonsense to permeate, influence, and mutate our culture to the point that we get articles that the OP has presented.

What more of that? Keep buying into the decaying puss of agitprop this has left us with because the PTB has equated anti-cannibis with some form of rightousness and protection of teens and children! We all know that the prohibition is like a siren that calls them to the substance just as we are able to abandon them in our lack of valor, conscience, or reason to the point that we can be frank, valid, and intimate about the damned subject, already. That's where it starts, Mom and Dad! Get real, man! Try to be really farout until it gets heavy, because the Man is gonna' come and take them away for it.

Freedom is, contrary to what they tell you, FREE! It always has been and always will be. When you have to pay for it, you know you have lost it because the money makers have turned it into a commodity and they want you to believe it should be payed for. So you can fight for it, but NEVER EVER think it can be paid for, bought, or sold. I mean, that stands to reason and I don't have to spell it out in order to ruin your cherished truism, do I?

[the other one]

7. So, legalize it, right?

If it was legal, we wouldn't need guns in national parks, because pot would be grown on legal farms by tax paying farmers.

That is your argument, correct?

Or are you just looking for reasons to justify your desire to carry a dangerous weapon of potential mass destruction in public?

[Euromutt]

12. Legalizing marijuana would ameliorate a lot of problems

For starters, the Mexican drug cartels make an estimated 60% of their revenue off marijuana sales in the United States. Supplanting their product with that, as you say, "grown on legal farms by tax paying farmers" would do more to limit the violence in Mexico than any renewed ban on the manufacture of so-called "assault weapons." The cartels ca buy their guns somewhere else, but not without money.

Legalizing and regulating other drugs would finish the job. And maybe we'd have less of a meth problem if cocaine were more affordable.

But a handgun "a dangerous weapon of potential mass destruction"? A bit prone to hyperbole, are we? The term "weapon of mass destruction" was coined precisely to distinguish nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from conventional weapons; even heavy artillery is not a "weapon of mass destruction." Using the term to refer to handguns may be effective in evoking emotional reactions, but in doing so, it trivializes the term. Or, more crudely put, if you're going to lose your shit because a private citizen somewhere in the country is carrying a handgun, what's left when someone threatens to drop an NBC weapon on the city you live in?

[mvccd1000]

14. They already did legalize it...

... the ability to drive down the road without becoming a criminal as I pass from state trust land into national park land, that is.

And, as I answered in #6, that's my main purpose for supporting the new rule (other than the fact that there was no basis in reality for the old rule).


Those of you who disagree like to claim that the parks were safe havens from violence before this rule change, which is sure to result in blood in the aspens. I merely posted an article that shows your claim to be baseless.

[old mark]

10. This has been happening for many years now, but seems like the problem

is getting worse.

mark

[greendog]

11. And your handgun is going to protect you from a gang of thugs sitting in trees with AK 47s?

Good luck! :crazy:

[mvccd1000]

13. Answered in #6. nt

[shadowrider]

16. Yup

I'm afraid my .40 wouldn't do me a lot of good no matter how good a shot I am.

[PavePusher]

25. Well, it's a lot better option than begging for mercy.

You are, of course, entitled to make your own decisions in such a situation. Just don't presume to make mine for me.

[GreenStormCloud]

31. But rifle armed drug guards aren't the only problem.

There are plain old-fashioned criminals who go to the parks to find human prey.

While my handgun won't help much against a rifle, it won't hurt either.

[Pavulon]

38. Bet I am a better shot with a handgun

that some moron in the woods with a spray and pray ak. You dont have to hit a person to make them find cover. Or shoot them at 30 yards and take their weapon. Again defense is getting away to tell the tale, not winning the fight by killing people.

[Duppers]

15. hmmm

Hand guns would not protect one fr an AK-47 armed person.

But

Hubby & I would never have hiked & camped in back-bear country w/o ours. (Yep, we broke the law yrs ago.)

[PavePusher]

26. There seems to be a lot of supposition that merely having an "AK"...

makes a criminal invulnerable.

Can someone explain that logic to me?

[Duppers]

28. well, that's a point

Bottom line: if I'm hiking the backwoods, I feel safer with a firearm no matter if there's an 'AK' or whatever out there.

[PavePusher]

29. Agreed. n/t

[SteveM]

17. Prohibition meet prohibition.

[Euromutt]

19. On a more general note, let me repost some numbers I crunched in another thread

To arrive at an approximation of rates of serious violent crime (the DoJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics counts homicide, robbery, rape and aggravated assault as "serious violent crimes") in National Parks, based on 2006 data, the first step is to divide the number of visits by the number of days in the year to arrive at a proxy average "permanent" population. 272.6m / 365 = ~764,849 people in a National Park on an "average" day. With 11 cases of homicide in the National Parks in 2006, we have (11 / 764,849) x 100,000 which gives us a homicide rate of 1.4/100,000 head of population. Lower than the U.S. homicide rate that year (5.7), but higher than the rates for the UK (1.37), Italy (1.06) and Germany (0.88).

Applying the same formula to other serious violent crimes we can generate rates that we can compare to the DoJ's National Criminal Victim Survey. Due to methodological inconsistencies in the 2006 survey, data for that year isn't available, but we can compare estimated rates from 2005 and 2007.
Rape rate: Nat'l Parks ~4.6; U.S. 2005 0.5; U.S. 2007 0.6
Robbery rate: Nat'l Parks ~8.0; U.S. 2005 2.6; U.S. 2007 2.4
Agg. assault: Nat'l Parks ~34.1; U.S. 2005 4.3; U.S. 2007 3.4

Again, my rates for the National Parks are a very rough approximation, but the impression I get is that while you may be at a comparatively low risk of being murdered in a National Park, you appear to be at a highly elevated risk of being assaulted, robbed or raped.

[spin]

24. Great post. Proves National Parks aren't safe at all ...(n/t)

[slackmaster]

21. Too bad it's so hard to get a concealed weapons permit in most of California

People who trash national parks suck.

[PavePusher]

27. What is the rule for carry in Cali State parks?

Can one do the unloaded open carry in them? If so, that same rule would apply in the Nationals.

Edit: It is allowed. See page 3: http://www.handgunlaw.us/states/california.pdf Excellent, I can go to Yosimite again! (Not that I would have let anything stop me...)