In January, I praised changes to the National Park Service regulations that allowed law-abiding Americans the same right to carry concealed weapons inside our national parks as they have outside of the national parks. Reversing a clear violation of the Second Amendment, the Department of the Interior changed their regulations whereby National Park Service (NPS) lands would be governed by state concealed firearms laws.
For all the reasons I articulated in my earlier commentary, this decision was a welcome change. Coming on the heels of the District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s draconian gun laws, one would think this would be a fairly easy issue for those tasked with upholding and enforcing our nation’s laws. Sadly, it seems personal political beliefs are ruling the day.
On March 19, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly decided to grant an injunction against these new regulations going into place. Most interesting is Kollar-Kotelly’s reasoning and what she refused to consider when arriving at her decision. Astonishingly, in Kollar-Kotelly’s 44-page opinion, there is not a single mention of the Second Amendment. Not one. Not a single mention of whether or not the Heller decision is relevant. In a case involving the federal government essentially banning the right to bear arms, this wasn’t even an issue. Even though Kollar-Kotelly notes one of the main reasons why NPS gun regulations were changed concerns “self-defense,” she never addressed whether Second Amendment rights might be violated.
Instead, Kollar-Kotelly decided that an injunction should be placed on the new regulations because of environmental concerns. ...
Read the rest here. Once again, I would not be at all surprised if the "environmental review" underway ends up concluding that the concealed carry rule somehow poses a grave threat to the environment in our precious National Parks, and thus concludes that the rule allowing lawful concealed carry should be invalidated.
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