I was reading an article this morning in the Seattle Times about the rise in crime in National Parks.
Over the past decade, slayings have occurred in national forests in Maine, Oklahoma and just outside Yosemite National Park in California.
In 2003, two Texan campers were shot to death at the Ouachita National Forest in Oklahoma by a mentally ill former prison guard. Edward Fields Jr. pleaded guilty just before his trial was to begin and received the death penalty.
In 1996, the bodies of two Maine hikers were found bound and gagged, with their throats slit, along the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park. Serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz was linked to the slayings by genetic evidence, but he killed himself in 2002 before he could be questioned.
In one of the most infamous cases, Cary Stayner in 1999 killed three guests at a motel just outside Yosemite National Park. Later that year he killed a park guide. Stayner confessed to all four slayings and was sentenced to death.
Attacks, threats and lesser altercations involving Forest Service workers reached an all-time high last year, according to government documents obtained by a public-employees advocacy group.
According to the agency, 477 such reports occurred in 2005, compared with 88 logged a year earlier. The total in 2003 was 104; in 1995, it was 34
Steve Costie, a member of The Mountaineers a hiking organization, blames the rise on the encroachment of urban sprawl into wilderness areas. I won’t disagree but there is one more significant reason. Nearly all National Parks do not allow guns. Crooks aren’t totally stupid just sick in the head. They know where to go where they won’t encounter others with guns. This is proven time and again in the cities. When you disarm the people, crime goes up.
Here’s my advice. Let’s all work toward getting the stupid laws overturned that prohibit you and I from self protection in National Parks. Find a place to take a good safety course in the use of hand guns and get certified to carry if you choose to carry concealed. In places where guns are allowed, you don’t need a permit to carry, only when you conceal.
We have the right to self protection and to that of our families no matter where we are. Contact your congressman and tell them that crime is on the rise in National Parks and you want to be able to protect yourselves.
Money talks and when they realize that they will be losing a lot of money when people stop going to the parks out of fear, they will change their ways.
Tom Remington
