On Monday, you can carry a gun in National parks

[peternap]

They have to follow the gun laws in your state but better check aand make sure they know what they are.

http://news.oldva.org/?p=3764
Why Lord Why, must we deal with

On Monday the 22end, the law goes into effect that requires National Parks to allow firearms in the park. It's really pretty simple. The parks must abide by the law within the state they are in.

So far, so good



In Central Virginia, an internal memo went out.
Now that's pretty neat! they got it right. Now the bad part on page 2.



There are a couple of glaring problems here.

First, there is NOTHING in Virginia law that says anything about a gun needing 1/3 exposed to be open. A firearm is considered concealed when:

§ 18.2-308.

"If any person carries about his person, hidden from common observation,"

That's it!  Hidden from common observation. !/8 can be visible and it can be clearly observed and identified.

Next is the major Faux Pas:

Carrying a firearm in your hands, whether handgun or long gun, is not OC. That's considered Brandishing and it's against the law.

Pardon me Guys, but BullSh...(well, you know)

http://law.justia.com/virginia/codes/toc1802000/18.2-282.html

18.2-282. Pointing, holding, or brandishing firearm, air or gas operated weapon or object similar in appearance; penalty.

A. It shall be unlawful for any person to point, hold or brandish any firearm or any air or gas operated weapon or any object similar in appearance, whether capable of being fired or not, in such manner as to reasonably induce fear in the mind of another or hold a firearm or any air or gas operated weapon in a public place in such a manner as to reasonably induce fear in the mind of another of being shot or injured. However, this section shall not apply to any person engaged in excusable or justifiable self-defense. Persons violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor or, if the violation occurs upon any public, private or religious elementary, middle or high school, including buildings and grounds or upon public property within 1,000 feet of such school property, he shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.

Now I think the key word in that is "reasonably"...What does that mean. Not being a lawyer, I decided to consult the Virginia Supreme Court.

81 E.g., Kelsoe v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 197, 308 S.E.2d 104 (1983) (''There are
two elements of the offense: (1) pointing or brandishing a firearm, and (2) doing so
in such a manner as to reasonably induce fear in the mind of a victim.''). See Nantz
v. State, 740 N.E.2d 1276, 1283 (Ind. App. 2001); State v. Tate, 377 N.E.2d 778 (1978)

I don't see one thing there about peacefully walking around with your shotgun. Seems I have to do something other than have a shotgun in my hand.If just holding your gun were a crime, every hunter in the state would be guilty.

The Feds need to do a little research I think.

[RainDog]

Wow! How'd I miss hearing about that?

The anti-gun crowd must be freaking out.

[MountainDon]

That's actually from an anti gun article, but there is something about it I like anyways.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-02-17/news/a-shot-in-the-park/

[peternap]

Wow! How'd I miss hearing about that?

The anti-gun crowd must be freaking out.

This has been going on for a while.
The Department enacted the rules a while ago and were in effect for a short time. The Brady bunch took it to Federal Court and the Court decided the Department didn't have the Authority by itself (Short version)

We pressured Congress (NRA< VCDL< GOA<ETC) to pass legislation. To make sure it would be signed into law it was attached to the Credit Card Reform Bill so veto the Carry and Veto the Bill. It is now law.

[peternap]

Oh...I have no idea who the scoundrel was that took the pictures of the Internal, not for public viewing, Memo.
Darned camera nuts!

[dug]

I am in no way anti-gun, though I have a feeling many of you would lump me in that category. I am, however, anti 'gun nut'. I am not saying anyone here is a gun nut, I don't know you well enough to make that accusation.

Seems to me there are some places they just don't belong. Churches would be one for most reasonable folk.

National parks are my church.

Now... yuk it up boys.

[peternap]

I am in no way anti-gun, though I have a feeling many of you would lump me in that category. I am, however, anti 'gun nut'. I am not saying anyone here is a gun nut, I don't know you well enough to make that accusation.

Seems to me there are some places they just don't belong. Churches would be one for most reasonable folk.

National parks are my church.

Now... yuk it up boys.

I expect the people murdered on the Skyline drive would be relieved to know they died in your church. Maybe you need to do a little better job telling your congregation about the Ten Commandments. Then we wouldn't need to carry a gun in your church and MY mountains.

Now... yuk it up boys.

No need to!

[dug]

Maybe you need to do a little better job telling your congregation about the Ten Commandments.

My congregation doesn't carry guns, unless we're hunting of course. My opinion is different than yours, nothing else.

[peternap]

My congregation doesn't carry guns, unless we're hunting of course. My opinion is different than yours, nothing else.

That's true Dug and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But the bottom line is, lawful gun owners can and will carry guns in National Parks so you should get used to the idea. The nearest Park to me is only open from sunrise to sunset and at 6:51 AM I will be there wearing, a Magnum Research BFR in 45/70 for the picture taking ceremony, as will people all over the country.

After that I'll go home, take it off and go on about my business.

[Don_P]

You feel safe unarmed in the city yet feel a need to carry in a park 
A national park is not a national forest. No problem in the forest, no need in the park, there is only one creature you can be hunting there. I cannot even take a dog in a park, I can in a forest. The method of implementation is nothing to be proud of. I have guns and am respectful of others feelings about them. They are tools I need to have in the country, I needed them twice this past week in a humanitarian role, its been a tough winter in your mountains. I suspect a mother walking her child on a park loop encountering a man with a gun will indeed feel fear and that would be a very reasonable reaction in my mind. If I'm on that jury, he was brandishing...even if it was in the holster. There's a time and a place, that ain't it. This kind of crap endangers my and every legitimate gun owners' 2nd ammendment rights, irresponsible stupidity.

[peternap]

Don, I don't live in the city. I'm not too far from you.
You make some good points. I don't agree with them but then again, you don't need me too.

But...the bottom line is still that we worked very hard for this one and we won!

And also, when I'm in the city I don't feel safe but I wear my 1911 not the BFR.

[RainDog]

 When I first read this post of peternap's, I immediately did a quick search on the web, 'cause as I said I hadn't heard about it before.

In Dug's unsolicited defense, there do seem to be folks objecting to this that don't seem to fit the typical anti-gun profile.

Example:

The National Parks Conservation Association

http://www.npca.org/media_center/press_releases/2010/guns_parks_021910.html

I own multiple firearms, but I don't hunt or carry anymore, so this doesn't directly effect me personally. I'll be interested to see how this ends up working out, though.

[MountainDon]

It should be pointed out that the new rule applies to National Monuments, Historic Parks and Trails, etc. as well as National Parks. Here in NM there are more Nat. Monuments than Nat. Parks. In general I don't think anyone will really notice much difference during any visit.

To me the new rule makes a lot of sense. Perhaps that is because I am in a state with permissive gun laws. A motor vehicle is treated as an extension of one's home. That is I can carry any loaded legal firearm in the vehicle if I want. Having to stop and unload, lock up a firearm before driving into or through a National Park or Monument always struck me as silly if not dumb.

We'll still have to follow the rule about no firearms with the park buildings as they are federal facilities and fall under the same no gun rule that applies to all federal buildings. That's the same as having to watch for "no gun" signs on any businesses around the state. This new rule simplifies things.

I wonder if the no gun in federal facilities rule will apply to the vault toilets located outside the main visitor center buildings?

[peternap]

You feel safe unarmed in the city yet feel a need to carry in a park 
A national park is not a national forest. No problem in the forest, no need in the park, there is only one creature you can be hunting there. I cannot even take a dog in a park, I can in a forest. The method of implementation is nothing to be proud of. I have guns and am respectful of others feelings about them. They are tools I need to have in the country, I needed them twice this past week in a humanitarian role, its been a tough winter in your mountains. I suspect a mother walking her child on a park loop encountering a man with a gun will indeed feel fear and that would be a very reasonable reaction in my mind. If I'm on that jury, he was brandishing...even if it was in the holster. There's a time and a place, that ain't it. This kind of crap endangers my and every legitimate gun owners' 2nd ammendment rights, irresponsible stupidity.

I just edited this post Don. It isn't wort the bandwidth to respond to it!

[MountainDon]

The gun toting people I worry about are the ones that are going to be carrying illegally wherever they go. The ones who all along have carried their guns in a concealed manner without having a permit, while being convicted felons, and so on. I've seldom given a second thought to people on trails with guns, other than to wonder what it was.

[IronRanger]

The gun toting people I worry about are the ones that are going to be carrying illegally wherever they go. The ones who all along have carried their guns in a concealed manner without having a permit, while being convicted felons, and so on. I've seldom given a second thought to people on trails with guns, other than to wonder what it was.

Exactly.

[peternap]

I wonder if the no gun in federal facilities rule will apply to the vault toilets located outside the main visitor center buildings?

No it Won't.
In order to be a facility under that definition, it has to be staffed.

[MountainDon]

Thank you Peter.

[peternap]

They are required to post a notice at the entrance of each building you CAN't enter.



This was posted where the arrow on the left is.

[glenn kangiser]

I am in no way anti-gun, though I have a feeling many of you would lump me in that category. I am, however, anti 'gun nut'. I am not saying anyone here is a gun nut, I don't know you well enough to make that accusation.

Seems to me there are some places they just don't belong. Churches would be one for most reasonable folk.

National parks are my church.

Now... yuk it up boys.

You haven't heard about the massacres in the mosques?

Looks like you better start carrying in church too.

[glenn kangiser]

You feel safe unarmed in the city yet feel a need to carry in a park  
A national park is not a national forest. No problem in the forest, no need in the park, there is only one creature you can be hunting there. I cannot even take a dog in a park, I can in a forest. The method of implementation is nothing to be proud of. I have guns and am respectful of others feelings about them. They are tools I need to have in the country, I needed them twice this past week in a humanitarian role, its been a tough winter in your mountains. I suspect a mother walking her child on a park loop encountering a man with a gun will indeed feel fear and that would be a very reasonable reaction in my mind. If I'm on that jury, he was brandishing...even if it was in the holster. There's a time and a place, that ain't it. This kind of crap endangers my and every legitimate gun owners' 2nd ammendment rights, irresponsible stupidity.

Don, I live next to a national park.  It contains a lot of wild land and animals, and millions of people including criminals go there yearly. It is large enough that there are major dope growing operations in it in the outlying areas and dope growers commonly shoot at people.  Honest people with guns are not a danger to others but there is no way to limit who visits parks especially the back country.

I don't usually feel the need to pack in the main areas, however if I was hiking cross country I would.  Lots of dope growers,  wild animals- bears etc. who are not afraid of people.  Maybe they are a danger -maybe not.

[peternap]

You can't educate people who stick their heads in a tree stump Glenn, even the ones that claim to be Pro Gun.

Here are just a few comments about the parks for those interested.

A watchdog group last week warned that law enforcement work in national parks is the most dangerous in federal service.

"National Park Service officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents," the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reported. "National Park Service commissioned law-enforcement officers were victims of assaults 111 times in 2004, nearly a third of which resulted in injury. This figure tops the 2003 total of 106 assaults and the 2002 total of 98."

"The National Park Service has an astoundingly poor safety record for its officers," says Randall Kendrick, who represents park rangers as part of the Fraternal Order of Police. "If anything, these assaults against park rangers are undercounted. If there is not a death or injury, pressures within a national park can cause the incident to be reported as being much more minor than it is in reality, and it is not unheard of for an assault to go unreported altogether."

So why all this violence and crime in places that are supposed to be tranquil and relaxing? Alcohol or drugs are part of most violent incidents. Hideaway methamphetamine labs and marijuana fields in rural park areas (some of them run by drug cartels) and illegal aliens crossing through parks near the US- Mexico border are part of a growing crime scene.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

THE FOREST TRAIL THAT BEGINS at the highest point on Virginia's Skyline Drive and drops quickly away from civilization seems an unlikely site for a double murder. As it descends into the backcountry of Shenandoah National Park, the gentle slope grows more pronounced and the rocky surface provides a tenuous foothold. In the distance, a clear creek cuts through an otherwise silent world of thick ferns and red-capped mushrooms. It was here on June 1 that park rangers, alerted by a concerned father's phone call, stumbled across the bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, and Lollie Winans, 26, at a wooded campsite, their wrists bound and their throats slit. The only witness to the crime appeared to be Winans' golden retriever, Taj.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Could this man be the Blue Ridge parkway rapist?
BY CARLOS SANTOS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, March 7, 2007

COVINGSTON, VA - Authorities in Nelson County are investigating the circumstantial case against Michael Andrew Nicholaou, now dead by suicide, in a 1984 rape along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The rape garnered national attention after DNA tests in 1994 proved that the man found guilty, Edward Honaker, was innocent. Honaker was sentenced in 1985 to three life sentences and served more than 10 years in prison before then-Gov. George Allen pardoned him. He was one of the first convicts in Virginia freed by DNA testing.

Nicholaou, who once ran a porn shop in Charlottesville, is a possible suspect in the June 23, 1984, rape near the Big Spy overlook.    Michael Nicholaou
Michael Nicholaou

Nicholaou fatally shot himself in 2005 on New Year's Eve after killing his wife and stepdaughter in Tampa, Fla. Nicholaou first came to the attention of Nelson authorities after Florida private detective Lynn-Marie Carty was contacted late last year by a client who had seen a story about Honaker on Court TV.

The client told Carty that Honaker bore an incredible resemblance to Nicholaou. Carty contacted Nelson authorities.
"It is a remarkable resemblance," said Mac Bridgwater, an investigator with the Nelson Sheriff's Department. "When I saw their pictures . . . it told me we had to take a look at this."

Nicholaou is also a suspect in homicides in New England. Carty, a detective who specializes in reuniting lost relatives, had been tracking Nicholaou on behalf of the family of his former wife. Family members believe he is the cause of her disappearance in 1988 in Massachusetts.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

On August 29, 1996, authorities responded to a call from a logger who had discovered a Toyota Tercel partially submerged in a drainage ditch near the Ditchbank Road in rural Carlton County. After the car was pulled from the ditch and identified as belonging to Larry and Mary Antonich of Two Harbors, authorities found the body of the Antonichs' son, 17-year-old Paul Antonich, in the trunk. The St. Louis County medical examiner determined Antonich's death resulted from multiple gunshot wounds inflicted after Antonich had received a severe beating. Antonich was last seen alive the previous evening, leaving for home in his parents' Tercel from a youth group meeting at the Hermantown Community Church.


Every state has it's own crime stories about the NPS and they keep getting worse.
The end of the story is, Guns are legal as of midnight tomorrow night. Those that don't like it...should have thought about it while the rest of us were working together to push it through.

[dug]

You can't educate people who stick their heads in a tree stump Glenn, even the ones that claim to be Pro Gun.


In order to educate someone you need to be speaking facts, you are voicing your opinion, which you are fully entitled to do.

It is your opinion that if every law abiding citizen carries a firearm, the world will be a safer place. I disagree, that is my opinion. Seems if that were true the U.S. would be the safest civilized country on earth seeing how we have the most people carrying guns, but lo and behold it aint so! In fact we have the firearms related death rates per capita of any non-3rd world country. Hmmmmm.

For 30 years now one of my greatest joys has been exploring wilderness areas . The wilder, the better. Many thousand miles I have logged without a single incident worth speaking of. I guess it can't be that dangerous.

Yes, bad things can and do occasionally happen, and it is a shame. I am just of the opinion that guns are not the answer. By far the biggest danger in the wilderness is being unprepared for the elements or getting lost. I am good friends with the SAR coordinator here in SW NM and the only gun related deaths have been suicide.

[peternap]

You can't educate people who stick their heads in a tree stump Glenn, even the ones that claim to be Pro Gun.


In order to educate someone you need to be speaking facts, you are voicing your opinion, which you are fully entitled to do.

It is your opinion that if every law abiding citizen carries a firearm, the world will be a safer place. I disagree, that is my opinion. Seems if that were true the U.S. would be the safest civilized country on earth seeing how we have the most people carrying guns, but lo and behold it aint so! In fact we have the firearms related death rates per capita of any non-3rd world country. Hmmmmm.

For 30 years now one of my greatest joys has been exploring wilderness areas . The wilder, the better. Many thousand miles I have logged without a single incident worth speaking of. I guess it can't be that dangerous.

Yes, bad things can and do occasionally happen, and it is a shame. I am just of the opinion that guns are not the answer. By far the biggest danger in the wilderness is being unprepared for the elements or getting lost. I am good friends with the SAR coordinator here in SW NM and the only gun related deaths have been suicide.

Facts..,.read em.
No one's saying you have to carry one. Everyone CAN NOW MAKE THEIR OWN MIND UP NOW!
I've been treking mountains longer than you if you only have 30 years in. Born in Va Mountains, grew up up in them and carry a gun whenever I go into them.

Now you want facts. The fact is VCDL In Va, and the NRA, GOA and a few others, pushed hard for this and got it. Fact!
Fact, it is the law now and there isn't anything you can do about it!
Fact, you don't have to carry a gun.

If you don't like it, join the Brady Campain. They aren't doing too well these days and could use some new recruits.

[glenn kangiser]

A law abiding citizen is defenseless against a criminal with a gun in most cases unless he has a gun. 

The criminal will hurt someone possibly with the gun.  The law abiding citizen with the gun will only protect himself against the criminal.  He is not a threat to other law abiding citizens.

The criminal is the only one that need fear a law abiding citizen with a gun.