Guns in Parks

Like we really need them.

You have to wonder sometimes what or who this administration is listening to. I'm beginning to be convinced it's just the voices in their heads. Now we need to be able to bring loaded guns into the national parks:

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says it's time to take a "fresh look" at the long-held ban against bringing loaded weapons into national parks and wildlife areas.

Kempthorne will soon issue new rules, subject to public comment, that could loosen those restrictions to more closely resemble the gun laws of the states where the federal sites are located.

Why bring federal park rules into line with state laws? Bush doesn't care about bringing the feds into line with the states in any other area. The logic gets torturous:

Gun advocates, including the National Rifle Association, and 51 U.S. senators urged the review, including Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. The current rules "infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners," the senators said in a letter to Kempthorne in December.

First off, note that Elizabeth Dole actually did something. I'm sure that will make all our friends in North Carolina proud. (And please note that North Carolina law basically bans guns from national parks completely.)

And are law abiding gun owners' rights being violated here? I think you'd have to work really, really hard to make a case for that. (Well, maybe not for the Roberts Court.)

I think we should all comment, and please don't remark on Kempthorne's intelligence -- we need to keep the discussion civil.