USMC—Dont twist yourself into a pretzel you cant get out of, with that logic.

The second comment is not mine.

Look, this is not personal for me, but, you came in here with quite an assertion, about letting people die if they disagreed with you. I would have to question why it is that you would do that.

I, in no way, require you to carry a weapon. I am not CIC.

By KDelphi, June 1 at 3:10 pm #

USMC—If you would stand by and watch any innocent be shot, because they are anti-gun, you are a disgrace to the USMC.

But isn’t that what you are saying. You don’t want me carrying a weapon in the park. The “bad guy” who doesn’t care what the law says about carrying a weapon in the park. But if I have to carry, then it’s okay (you actually demand of me) that I defend someone other than myself or my family, then it’s okay if I carry.

“I would love to be convinced by the gun-holders that the deterrent effect of concealed weapons is more than an urban legend.”

I would try to convince you, but already realize the folly in it. No matter what it said, you will find a way to argue it out, to debate it. But having deter a bad guy, without having to shot him is pretty commonplace. I, myself, have had to do it on several occasions. And why wouldn’t it be reported, oh, it stopped what might have happened, but didn’t happen. I will reply no more to ya here, you have fun with it, and I will continue to carry, thanks.

Being a woman, I think that standing by and letting someone die because they do not share your views is a disgrace to the USMC.

USMC—If you would stand by and watch any innocent be shot, because they are anti-gun, you are a disgrace to the USMC.

Good luck with your chosen “career”, too. Good luck with getting disability if you get shot. Good luck with getting health care from the VA. Good luck fighting rich kid’s wars for them. If that is what you enjoy….

I am not debating whether people can carry weapons—that has been decided and those of use who disagree can obviously shut up or die…real ‘Merkin!!

The debate is supposed to be as to why the lame-ass Congress voted to put it in a so-called credit card bill…because the NRA convinces you that you need to carry a gun, so , in turn you do! Think that there might be a financial incentive there??

Have you noticed USMC, how many people here think that they will “take up arms against the govt”??—-being in the military and all, how do you think that that will work out?

KDelphi, I am not young, and I have been in combat for the better part of 5years, from the very beginning. So any “vet” wants to take up arms with me, let me know. Just for general knowledge, I have 15 yrs in the MC. Now that we have established my background, and my Marines would gladly define my leadership abilities, yes I would stand by and watch. I would be willing to wait to see if they could debate it out with a bad guy (women and children) be the only exception. You have your belief, and I have mine. Good luck with yours.

USMC Sam—that makes no sense, that you have a right to know who is anti-gun control and I dont even have a right to know if you are concealed carry. YOu sound like you just want things your way. So you would just stand by and watch an innocent person be killed if they were pro-gun control…hmmmmm. I assume that you are very young.

There are many USMC vets who would disagree with you and, are concerned that you will grow up , like thay did, and have alot of problems.

Good luck to you, sincerely. Your future fights will not be with anti-gun fellow citizens.

By KDelphi, May 30 at 5:36 pm #
If you need a gun to win an argument, you must be a loser…

First, yes even my family says that I am in the right business, and enjoy what I do by the way. I wonder what kind of argument you will win with the bad guy, or don’t you believe they exist. And no, I don’t need to know if you are carrying, just if you would rather defend yourself with words. And no I don’t believe in a national gun registery. And truth be told, I didn’t own one gun prior to Obama coming in office. Well, things are different now aren’t they.

USMC Sam—I wish that we could know too!! (I would assume that those who carry concealed are “for it”)

Unfortunatley, the NRA has successfully lobbied in my state, to see that we cant even know who owns a gun, who has conceled carry, and, registrations are ripped up in 24 hrs.

Youre right—we ALL have a right to know.

If you need a gun to win an argument, you must be a loser..but, it looks like youre in the right business, anyway..if people want to carry huge, automatic weapons, they should have your job. But, most just think that theyre going to “fend off the govt”...right

As a CWP card holder, I wish that we could identify who is for and against gun control. That way I could know if I need to defend someone, or just see if they can talk their way out of it like a debate. I know that I will protect mine with, or without, the law.

What about when I get a bigger and faster gun? And, then , bigger and faster?? and so on and so on.

Yes, be a “liberal” stop wars, spread guns, ‘Merkas only export!

Wow…the testosterone…

Alan—very intelligent comment!

Larry raises some cogent points, and, then, ends with this:“Ms. Coocoo your opinion is nuts.”

Which brings us to the question of whether we should pay attention to anything else he has to say.

Nah, dont think I’ll bother.

In reference to “First, at the inception of the National Parks system, under then president Theodore R. Roosevelt, it was PERFECTLY LEGAL to carry a personal rifle, pistol or shotgun into a National Park”. And the majority of the population lived on farms and the population was only 76 million. It is now over 300 million! Over time we modify/add laws to accommodate change.

“When I was a young lad, growing up in the 60’s, there wasn’t the “gun control culture” that there is today…” THIS ISN’T THE 60’S. There were no Columbines, Virginia Tech’s etc back then. I am glad you are responsible as I’m sure many other gun owners are too. However we have laws that are suppose to be directed at the common good and walking into the forest and shooting anything you want (we should do away with hunting licensees too don’t you agree - they are an infringement) is ridiculous. Oh I know, it doesn’t mean shooting everything…

The idea that crime goes down because people are packing is nonsense. And the idea that cities with gun control have more crime isn’t because there aren’t enough guns - it’s because of POVERTY.

Most on the side of guns want to paint those who advocate gun CONTROL, not abolition, as the gun-control-freaks-who-will-take-away-our-guns. Cold day in hell for that to happen. Likewise anytime ANY kind of gun control (assault weapons?) is suggested it’s into overdrive drive.

So maybe we can find some common ground where reasonable controls can be in place and both sides can coexist.

(Disclaimer - I was once a gun owner when I lived in the country but moving to the city ended that.)

Lovepirate: when we were young lads, growing up in the 60s, there hadn’t been Columbine, Virginia Tech, or any of a host of other school shoot-em-ups. If a kid riding a school bus with a rifle in a case doesn’t give you the willies, you’re living in the past. Sorry, but I’m not too keen to have a school full of hormone and you-tube addled kids armed to the teeth. You’re just asking for trouble.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Take 2,000 “law-abiding” citizens, divide them into two equally sized groups, subject both to extremely difficult circumstances (over-crowded, can’t find jobs, extreme summer heat with no A/C, constantly congested traffic), but give one group concealed or unconcealed weapons of their choice - as many and as lethal as they want - and give everyone in the other a ball of Play-dough (TM).

Care to wager which group has the most deaths by unnatural causes?

The intent of the 2nd amendment was to protect a nascent state from attack from the outside and tyranny from within, and to assure that states could defend themselves from a federal government run amok. Now that the underlying reasons for the amendment have faded into oblivion, this same amendment has served to protect individuals in this country from exercising their personal fetish for firearms. That is all it is. Period. End. Of. Story.

OK, I have a couple of questions concerning this issue. First, at the inception of the National Parks system, under then president Theodore R. Roosevelt, it was PERFECTLY LEGAL to carry a personal rifle, pistol or shotgun into a National Park, and I’m sure remained so up until: It became ILLEGAL to do so… When exactly that was, or why, I’m not exactly sure. When did it become illegal? I’m guessing within the last 30 years or so… Why did it become illegal? I’m guessing because of the idiotic “gun control culture” that has been trying it’s damnedest to politicize and demonize constitutionally guaranteed, law-abiding firearms ownership these last 30 years as well…

  When I was a young lad, growing up in the 60’s, there wasn’t the “gun control culture” that there is today… I was in the Boy Scouts of America, and served as “range master” of my local Boy Scout summer camp. (Camp Omache, close to Monroe, WA pronounced: “Oh.mach.i”). When school started up again that following September of ‘67, I found myself needing to give a “demonstration speech”. So quite naturally, firearms being one of my areas of expertise, I decided to give a speech on how to disassemble, clean and re-assemble a beautifully Belgian made, Browning take-down, .22 rifle. So, the day of the speech, I zipped the unloaded rifle into its’ vinyl carrying bag and set off for the school bus stop… There were at least ten other kids already waiting when I got there. Guess how many of them commented on what I was (obviously) carrying? None. Zero. Zilch. Even Mrs. Sparks, our school bus driver, commented not. Upon arriving at school, I put the cased rifle in a corner of the room behind my teacher Mr. Moeller’s desk until the time I would need it to do my speech. When the time came for me to deliver my speech, I did so, and got an “A” on it… That afternoon, I took the rifle home with me on the school bus, where NOTHING was said regarding what I was carrying that trip either…

  If a 13 yr. old kid were to try that today, I shudder to think what might happen. To the kid. To his/her parents. In this day of “zero tolerance” school policies…  Yeah, “zero tolerance”... To: COMMON SENSE.

  When I turned 21, I didn’t go to the nearest bar to get “liquored up”, I went to my local sheriff’s office to apply for a concealed carry permit. That was almost thirty-five years ago. I’ve “carried” almost every day since then. Guess how many times I’ve “cleared leather” (drawn my weapon) or how many people I’ve shot… That’s right. None. Zero. Zilch.  Am I an “anomaly”? Of course I’m not. There are literally TENS OF MILLIONS of other, productive, tax-paying, voting, law-abiding American gun owners and “concealed carriers” out there, just like myself. The operative words here being: “law-abiding American”.

    I, for one appreciate knowing that there are other “concealed carriers”  out there. When the next “nut case” opens fire on a crowd of unarmed innocents, and you just so happen to be in “that crowd”, you might appreciate it, too.

  A few years ago, when I lived in New York City, and was a registered voter there, I wrote to Senator Charles Schumer to ask him: “Senator, after the Nazi holocaust of World War 2, how can ANY Jew be FOR “gun control”? I’m STILL waiting for a reply…

Re: wordsonfire

Your comment: “One general observation.  People who feel a need to “have protection” wherever they go are more likely to imagine/create scenarios where they feel threatened and have to use that protection.”

What I’ve found is that people who have an inordinate fear of guns have many unbased fears to go along with that fear.  Guns can be dangerous, absolutely.  To claim that people who have or carry a gun to be “more likely to imagine/create scenarios where they feel threatened” is without merit.  What, are you a magician, you simply “pulled that out of your hat.”

If people with guns were so half ass backwards and SO supposedly unrestrained, then I would guess that Cheney would already be dead, Rove would already be dead, Bush would already be dead, Rice would already be dead, Yoo would already be dead, Addington would already be dead…..the list goes on.  And lets face it, there’s a whole lot more where these came from, including the mouths who lie daily to the American people, play their underhanded games and are simply waterboys for these crooks.

How do you qualify your premise and surmise that people who have guns are, “more likely to imagine/create scenarios where they feel threatened”.  America was threatened, and so far the threat is not yet gone, contained in certain aspects….yes, but not gone.

One general observation.  People who feel a need to “have protection” wherever they go are more likely to imagine/create scenarios where they feel threatened and have to use that protection.  I don’t actually have time to pull up the numbers, but houses with guns have higher rates of suicide/accidental deaths than homes without guns.

As the parent of two white children and one brown child . . . I have always worried about this “I perceived a danger,” and the only danger is that of someone possessing melanin.

Also, this had no business being added to the credit card legislation.

By henrybowman, May 26 at 4:44 am

I like that moniker, is it your real name or from the book? Just read where there are less than a 1000 copies left and the prices reflect it.

Knocking clay pigeons out of the air with a .375 H&H, my oh, my.

Cocco and people like her are frantically peddling the illiterate fantasy that the very same people who responsibly carry firearms every day on public streets, on public transportation, in churches, state parks, and in business workplaces—without “going wild and shooting everybody”—are going to turn into mindless yahoos the minute they cross an artificial boundary line into a national park.  What’s so magic about national parks?  It’s nothing but bald-faced prejudice and bigotry, and it’s contemptible.

When Florida liberalized carry, the Cocco crowd screamed blood in the streets. When 43 states followed, the Cocco crowd screamed the US would become Dodge City. When the “assault weapons” ban expired, the Cocco crowd screamed the sky would fall. Not only were they dead wrong all three times, but all three times VIOLENT CRIME WENT DOWN.  Now the Cocco crowd is screaming “blood in the woods.” Only ideologues and gullible morons are still paying attention to anything they say.

If Cocco wants to know why anyone would need a gun in a National Park, I have a deal for her. She ought to be willing to take a three-day unarmed hike through her choice of Organ Pipe, Sequoia, Coronado, or Padre Island National Parks (but my choice of the area in each park). If she makes it back out, I’ll buy her a new Prada bag. But she has to amend her will to leave me a 12-pack of Moxie before setting out.

One thing I’d like to see…..all the Dems who voted for this amendment, in bright red hunting outfits, shooting at “vermin”.

Which we probably will before its over with.

“P.T., here in California in the early 1970s the Black Panther Party did just that. They paid a visit to the state capitol in Sacramento armed to the teeth. The ruling class was not amused.”

Yeah, all of sudden Reagan and the gun crowd started reconsidering what their position on guns should be.  The Panthers were standing around outside the state capitol with their guns.  That was legal as long as the guns were unloaded I guess.

P.T., here in California in the early 1970s the Black Panther Party did just that. They paid a visit to the state capitol in Sacramento armed to the teeth. The ruling class was not amused.

Growers have used national parks in California & elsewhere for years, and routinely carry guns. It’s a problem for the people who visit the parks—if you accidently walk into a grow you might get shot. Fortunately most are hard to find but the potential is always there.

Maybe the Dems want to sell the land to line their pockets, and need to make them unsafe & unpopular before doing so? They wouldn’t sell us out, would they?

Here’s a good one on sell-out Dems….Coburn got them to put it in the credit card bill (which is total crap) and then voted against it!!

Even though it is at our expense (both parts of the bil) I had to laugh..silly-ass Dems..lol or cry.

wtf is this in a credit card bill??

If they had the courage of their convictions, congressional gun supporters would back allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns and explosives for self-defense when visiting the U.S. Capitol Building.  That’ll be the day!

Is it time yet to consider getting rid of all the incumbant loonies residing in our senate? How many times do we need them to kick us in the face before we get serious about kicking them out of public well paid employment?(never could figure out why they call it public service!) Its personal service, and we all know it.
This new gun law would mean we are willing to turn the parks over to the redneck, gun toting, fanatics who think the boogie man is behind every boulder and every bush.
A normal nature loving family, armed only with hiking boots would not be safe to enter the park.

She is making a huge aamount of good sense, which is why the NRA and those that think that they can defend themselves from Blackwater with a semi-automatic will castigate her…

Actually, as I see it, the NRA sought and got sweet revenge for an anti-gun provision slipped into a pro-gun bill back in 1986—a “stealth attack” on gun rights, one might say. Reagan signed a bill that expanded the numbers of “curio and relic” firearms available to Americans from overseas, without realizing that the bill also contained a ban on selling new fully-automatic firearms (even domestic-manfactured ones) to Americans after a cut-off date in April 1986, and a freeze on the importation of older fully-automatic weapons after that same date.

That’s why fully-automatic weapons are so horrendously expensive nowadays; for example, a legal, selective-fire AK-47 imported before April 1986 could cost as much as $15,000 to $25,000. Thus, owning full-autos is a rich man’s game (I understand Cheney has some, for instance).

So I suppose what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and Ms. Cocco and the other hoplophobes can bellyache as they please. It’s the law of the land; suck it up or shut up. Gun owners have had to do it for years.

Re: eggroll

Your comment: “A national park, a wilderness area, and to some lesser extent the national forests and other managed federal lands should be presented to people as “Hey, this is the one legacy from our natural past that we are protecting and assuring will be pristine for our descendents 40 generations from now.”

A map of the “lands” you speak of.  It’s damn near HALF of the whole western part of this country and almost ALL of Alaska.

http://www-atlas.usgs.gov/natlas/Natlasstart.asp

(this map apparently will not link to the specifics, So….after you link, chose “Boundaries”, then check “federal lands” and “states” boxes.  THEN the “Redraw map” button….... after it comes up, hit the “map key” tab for the ACTUAL amount of LAND AREA we are talking about and their designations)

I guess “lies of omission” are non-ideological.  This is the TRUE amount of land area to which you refer.  I know for a fact the state of Wyoming is at least half…. state or federal lands, looks like Nevada’s got that all beat to hell, though….zoom in.

As for your assertion Marie that, “The parks are reliably—in fact, almost unbelievably—safe. In 2007, according to the Park Service, there were 382 incidents that fit the FBI’s categories of violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault). They were spread across 34 million acres of parkland that were visited by 275 million travelers.

NewsFLASH , “the country” or rural areas are always safer than the city, at least as far as humans are concerned.  MOST problems that are caused in these areas ARE NOT caused by the people who live there, they’re caused by ignorant tourists, who simply CANNOT understand, that this is not nowhere, to the people that live there.  Also, what exactly are you referring to when you say “parkland”?

That’s why tourists get “those ugly looks”, from locals…. cause they know…. simply by mannerism, who the idiots are.  And I admit, many times, I’ve thought “hope you get bit by a rattlesnake, idiot”.... You might consider that a nasty thing to think, but with the rude attitude so often locals endure, it’d be fitting.  Trust me, sometimes aliens do the most “unwary” of things…. but go ahead, have at ‘er, “if the gators don’t get ‘cha, the alligators will.

Sure… climb that ridge, its just a rock, after all… the fact that its a DEN OF RATTLESNAKES shouldn’t be cause for concern.  I knew a local who stopped her truck to WARN, the climbers regarding the area….and was told, “they weren’t all that concerned”.  They were “nature lovers” after all…...LOL.  Have at ‘er.  (We never did “hear” the rest of the story….) just laughed in amazement.

Certainly, there is a fine line between stupidity and bravery as regards the love of our natural areas.

Oh yeah, the guns…. yes those vicious, shootin’ up the place, gun totin’, half crazed “red necks”... what will we do?!  We could simply say, if you have out of state plates, YOU CAN’T HAVE A GUN HERE!

Frank Zappa noted that there is more stupidity in the universe than hydrogen. Having worked for the US Forest Service in California and spent many years hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, I must say everybody in this discussion seems to have missed the aspect of habitat protection. A national park, a wilderness area, and to some lesser extent the national forests and other managed federal lands should be presented to people as “Hey, this is the one legacy from our natural past that we are protecting and assuring will be pristine for our descendents 40 generations from now.” From experience the gun crowd will simply do stupid stuff with their firearms, blasting away at signage and other public property, animals large and small, and other humans (including park personnel). For Coburn and his ilk, the ancient notion that God put us on earth for “dominion and control” somehow conflates with guns and a right to destroy our natural legacy. It is a bit sad that this is the implicit view of the US Congress. Once I had to interview a 13-year-old boy who had shot a California Condor. He explained it was a mistake, he meant to shoot an eagle.

Hopefully most NP visitors don’t and won’t carry a gun, loaded or unloaded into the park as they really would like to enjoy the park for what it is.

Fortunately, there will be those that will carry guns into the park who are more mature and respectful and most likely won’t even pull them out much less fire it.

Then there are the truly irresponsible ones that will go into a park loaded for ‘bear’, so to speak, and will fill the air with bullets using anything for targets and this is where I can see people getting hurt or killed for no reason or the park being shot up like a war had just been fought. And that may be the only way to have this law/ruling rescinded.