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Going Out To See The Scenery?- ACTION REQUIRED

ed

Founder's Club Member - Moderator
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[align=center]Going Out To See The Scenery?[/align]
[align=center]In Virginia, You Could End Up A Felon![/align]Wednesday, June 25, 2008

It's a beautiful Summer day. You decide to take your family for a drive to see the scenery of Virginia. And, as a Right-to-Carry permit holder, you also take your legal firearm with you, just in case. Problem is, you may be about to violate federal law!

Here in Virginia, even with a carry permit, you are breaking federal law if you take a ride down Skyline Drive and are carrying a loaded, operable firearm for self-defense. If you take the turn to use the George Washington Parkway in Alexandria, you are in violation. In either case, you do not even have to leave your car. Just turn down a public road!

This is the current, unfair situation that will continue to exist, if you don't take action right now!

The U.S. Department of the Interior has issued a proposed rule to eliminate, once and for all, this prohibition on Right-to-Carry in national parks and wildlife refuges. NRA is leading the effort to change this policy and we are very close to winning this important battle.

Not surprisingly, anti-gun and anti-hunting extremists are contorting the facts to try to continue this prohibition of self-defense. They are launching e-mail broadsides in an all-out push for their supporters to oppose this common sense measure. (Read a recent HSUS attack e-mail here: https://community.hsus.org/campaign/US_2008_parks_poaching/explanation).

These new rules cannot take effect until after a period of public comment. And make no mistake; our opponents are aggressively ramping up their efforts to try to convince the Secretary of the Interior to reverse his decision.


To combat this effort, you must take a few moments to submit comments on this issue by June 30, 2008, by going to this web site: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648053d497.

You may also mail your comments to:

Public Comments Processing
Attn: 1024-AD70
Division of Policy and Directives Management
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222
Arlington, VA 22203

Your comments will have the most impact if you use your own words. To assist you in drafting your comments, keep the following points in mind:

* Rules on carrying and transporting firearms should be consistent-across the board-with the laws of the state that includes the national park or wildlife refuge;

* Law-abiding citizens should not be prohibited from protecting themselves and their families while enjoying America's national parks and wildlife refuges;

* The new rules should provide uniformity across all federal lands, eliminating the patchwork of laws that create confusion for gun owners;

* Current regulations fail to account for the significant change in state laws since 1984. 48 states now have laws that permit laws that permit carrying and 40 have strong Right-to-Carry laws. Federal regulations should recognize the change in state laws and follow their lead, and;

* The new regulations should restore the rights of law-abiding gun owners who wish to transport and carry firearms for all lawful purposes on most DOI lands, just as they do now on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands

Remember, all comments must be received by June 30. Submit your comments TODAY!

Please share this information with your family, friends, and fellow firearm owners and encourage them to act on this issue RIGHT AWAY by sending comments of their own!
 

asforme

Campaign Veteran
Joined
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Location
Kalamazoo, MI
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Can someone help me understand this? It's apparently not a law, it's a rule, otherwise it would take a bill passed into law to change.

So how can violating a rule make a person a felon?
 

ed

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Here is more from VCDL today:

**Even if you have already sent in a comment on the proposed gun-ban
repeal in National Parks - READ ON**

With the Heller decision ruling by the Supreme Court, it looks like
the National Park gun ban is toast!

The comment period on the repeal of the National Park gun ban ends
MONDAY night, so WE NEED TO GET CRACKING NOW!!!

We need to let the Department of the Interior know that the National
Park gun ban is DOA, that the current gun-ban regulations be removed
from the books, and that they need to implement the new regulations as
per the VCDL wording.

Here is the link to the contact page:

http://tinyurl.com/5juwn3

Copy and paste the following text into the "General Comments" box and
then click "Next Step" at the bottom to continue.

***EVEN IF you already commented, you can submit an amendment to your
comments with the text below***

Suggested "General Comments" text:

--

Pursuant to the US Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs.
Dick Heller, both the existing and proposed National Park Service &
National Wildlife Refuge weapons regulations are invalid,
unconstitutional and void. The Virginia Citizens Defense League and
over 4 dozen co-petitioning organizations advised the Parks service of
this as long ago as 2004. Since the holding in Heller is that their
total ban on handguns infringes the 2nd Amendment, DOI and NPS should
accept the VCDL petition language as follows and implement the
regulation IMMEDIATELY after the comment period closing.

Under existing legal doctrine, once a law is held unconstitutional, it
is stricken; in the case of the park service CFR 36, regulation 2.4,
it is almost exactly the same as the District of Columbia, and
therefore void. Further, the DOI proposed regulation with it's flawed
"analogous state lands" language and is thereby also in violation
since any state level bans on bearing arms in analogous state lands
would also be implicated under Heller. The Department of the Interior
is hereby instructed to IMMEDIATELY amend the current regulations
pursuant to the VCDL petition language, copied below and the decision
of the US Supreme court rendered in Heller. The Supreme Court held
that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right protecting the rights to
keep arms and bear arms which supersedes CFR 36 regulation 2.4.

I support the proposed change to permit loaded firearms / weapons in
National Parks and Wildlife refuges but comment that the proposed
regulation should be amended as follows:

"A person may possess, carry, and transport loaded, and operable
firearms or other weapons within a national park area in the same
manner, and to the same extent, that a person may lawfully possess,
carry, and transport loaded and operable firearms or other weapons in
the state in which the federal park, or that portion thereof, is
located, provided that such possession, carrying and transporting
otherwise complies with applicable federal and state law."

And for National Wildlife Refuges:

"A person may possess, carry, and transport loaded, and operable
firearms or other weapons within a national wildlife refuge area in
the same manner, and to the same extent, that a person may lawfully
possess, carry, and transport loaded and operable firearms or other
weapons in the state in which the federal wildlife refuge, or that
portion thereof, is located, provided that such possession, carrying
and transporting otherwise complies with applicable federal and state
law."
 

nova

Regular Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2007
Messages
3,149
Location
US
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This is for National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. Does this also include National Forests (Like the ones west of I-81 and around Virginia Tech for example)?
 

denwego

Regular Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2006
Messages
276
Location
Houston, Texas, USA
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nova wrote:
This is for National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. Does this also include National Forests (Like the ones west of I-81 and around Virginia Tech for example)?

National Forests have followed the laws for the states in which they're located for quite some time, if not forever. When I was living in Colorado, I went shooting almost exclusively in Roosevelt National Forest in the foothills between Boulder and Lyons. It's possible for the state to prohibit carrying in a National Forest (such as North Carolina), but Virginia doesn't do this. I believe shooting in a NF inside Virginia is subject to more regulations than out in Colorado, but just carrying isn't illegal outside of hunting restrictions.
 
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