Allowing Concealed, Loaded Guns In Our National Parks: How Did We Not Think Of This Sooner?
If you're like me -- a proud gun owner who is constantly looking for places to take his gun -- you may have encountered the frustration and sadness that comes with the realization that you can't take your favorite firearm with you into a national park.
Parks and guns seem to go together so well: families playing games, lovers picnicking, and you and your loaded gun concealed in the wasteband of your shorts. It's like chocolate and peanut butter, but until now, it was illegal.
"'Until now'? Do you mean the government has finally collapsed and we can hunker down in our survival shelters shooting at looters?'" I'm sure you're all wondering this, and although I'm sad to say that our government is still intact, it did manage to do something right today: the House of Representatives passed legislature that allows -- finally -- loaded guns in our national parks.
It's okay if you're pinching yourself or even shooting yourself in the hand a little, because that's exactly what I did when I first heard this news -- that's how much I was in excited disbelief. The bill passed as an attachment to some credit card bill, which makes sense, because I often buy guns using my credit card.
But really, does anyone care how it got passed? The important thing is that you can drive to the nearest national park right now with 27 of your best guns with you, locked, loaded, and ready to go -- and now it's legal! I can think of at least 90 ways this will come in handy, including:
- Protection from wild marmots
- Protection from teenagers talking loudly
- Protection from other people in the park who have a bunch of loaded guns on them
Of course, we don't need a reason to be able to take our guns wherever we want to. Our country guarantees us this freedom in its Constitution via the good old Second Amendment, which reads, and I quote:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms [i.e., anywhere they want to like in national parks and in schools and children's plays], shall not be infringed."
With this clear and easily-understood directive, our Founding Fathers guaranteed that we'd always be able to bring our guns wherever we'd like, and use them for all kinds of purposes, from keeping the British out of our business to shooting trout out of a stream in a national park.
If our Constitution so obviously wants us to bring guns into the park, why has it taken the government so long to formally allow it? It's easy to place the blame on activist judges -- and I do -- but I think it's also that too many of us have forgotten the wisdom of those men who built America with their guns all those years ago. The Founding Fathers were infallible geniuses, and the things they said will be true forever. Think about it: if gun control activists are so smart, then why didn't they found a country? A country called America?
In fact, in honor of the Founding Fathers, I'm going to start capitalizing certain Nouns in my sentences. If it was good enough for Them, it's good enough for Me. It's My way of helping You to remember Them the next time you bring your Gun to a Park, and how important that right truly is.
