National Park Service Silliness - Example

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While driving from Orange VA to Fredericksburg I ran up on this.



There was little warning on this 55mph stretch of road. The 'NPS' part of the road (prohibited area) was only one and a half miles long.

There was no safe place to pull over to unload and disarm for the two minutes you'd be on NPS property.

Technically, for this stretch a person previously carrying a perfectly legal firearm in their car would become a federal criminal.

Two distinct hazards are created by the NPS silliness.

1) No place to pull over far enough to safely exit the vehicle on a busy road before you entered the 'prohibited' area. Children, can you say SPLATT!

2) Any time a firearm is handled, for any reason, the chance of an accident increases. Also, having to unnecessarily re-chamber a round increases the risk of bullet setback and an overpressure kaboom. Granted, the odds are slim, but stranger things have happened.

While MOST people might just 'sail through' with no consequences, there's always the possibility of an accident or breakdown during that 1.5 miles.

ALSO - if you did just play the odds and ignore the prohibition you'd be royally screwed during a security polygraph if they ever asked the infamous ...

"Other than traffic violations, have you ever purposely broken a law and not been caught?"

You'd have to cop to a federal gun crime.

In the Washington DC area security polygraphs are quite common.

To add Irony to Idiocy, the name of this stretch of road is 'Constitution Highway' and it's also called 'The Constitution Route.'

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I just got off the phone with Mac Wyckoff, who is a Historian with the Fredericksburg - Spotsylvania office of the National Park Service. I reached him at (540) 373-6122.

Now we all know how much veracity there is in anything that is not printed on letterhead stationery and not notarized, but notwithstanding -

Mr. Wyckoff says that the boundary of Wilderness Battlefield extends to the shoulder of the road along Virginia State Route 20 (The Constitution Highway/The Constitution Route).

If you want to trust your liberty and future to my recounting of Mr. Wyckoff's statement, You are "good to go" as long as you do not pull off the paved road surface when passingthrough there.

I think I will take on a project to get info on the borders of all of the NPS land in Virginia. Not sure how it is recorded, so I'm not sure how I could post it. But it just might keep me too busy to loom for a while.

stay safe.

skidmark

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I'd be very interested in knowing about the boundaries around historic Yorktown. It's a hodgepodge of NPS land and private homes and businesses. Obviously the Colonial Parkway is off limits, but what about the other roads?

Google Maps Link

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skidmark wrote:

I just got off the phone with Mac Wyckoff, who is a Historian with the Fredericksburg - Spotsylvania office of the National Park Service. I reached him at (540) 373-6122.

Now we all know how much veracity there is in anything that is not printed on letterhead stationery and not notarized, but notwithstanding -

Mr. Wyckoff says that the boundary of Wilderness Battlefield extends to the shoulder of the road along Virginia State Route 20 (The Constitution Highway/The Constitution Route).

If you want to trust your liberty and future to my recounting of Mr. Wyckoff's statement, You are "good to go" as long as you do not pull off the paved road surface when passingthrough there.

I think I will take on a project to get info on the borders of all of the NPS land in Virginia. Not sure how it is recorded, so I'm not sure how I could post it. But it just might keep me too busy to loom for a while.

stay safe.

skidmark

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Thanks skid.

Assuming that Mr. Wyckoff is correct, how is a normal 'citizen' supposed to know from a sign that simply says 'Now Entering ...'

NPS has made it clear that the highway leading from Mt. Vernon to DC is 'Off Limits.' There are, however, non-prohibited places (residences, etc.) on either side of the road that require a person to 'cross over' the 'prohibited area' merely to get from home to work or the store. Again, for just a FEW seconds, they'd be a 'criminal.'

Of course, where mere citizens are concerned, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

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I'm now in Round 5 of email exchanges with NPS Cartography Center. It looks like I might be able to get boundary survey data for all NPS land in Virginia, but it will be a difficult process.

Please stay tuned.

I'll post in a new thread if I start to get useful info/data.

stay safe.

skidmark

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TheEggman wrote:

While driving from Orange VA to Fredericksburg I ran up on this.

There was little warning on this 55mph stretch of road. The 'NPS' part of the road (prohibited area) was only one and a half miles long.

There was no safe place to pull over to unload and disarm for the two minutes you'd be on NPS property.



1) No place to pull over far enough to safely exit the vehicle on a busy road before you entered the 'prohibited' area. Children, can you say SPLATT!

2) Any time a firearm is handled, for any reason, the chance of an accident increases. Also, having to unnecessarily re-chamber a round increases the risk of bullet setback and an overpressure kaboom. Granted, the odds are slim, but stranger things have happened.


To add Irony to Idiocy, the name of this stretch of road is 'Constitution Highway' and it's also called 'The Constitution Route.'

Click to expand...

Easy. The NPS doesn't want you carrying period. By having their "system" like this, it discourages people from carrying at all if they have to worry about unloading and reloading in order to not break the law. Remember...law abiding people make a point of abiding by the law no matter how dumb it is.



As for the name of the road, remember that George Mason University is named after a VA patriot who once said "To disarm the people is the most effective way to enslave them." yet GMU bans all guns on campus for students/staff/faculty.