The new rule satisfies a campaign promise made by Senator Jim Webb to gun rights activists to act to repeal the National Park Gun Ban "that disarms only law abiding citizens in Interior Department/National Park Service [lands] across Virginia."
Park and wildlife refuge visitors have generally been required to unload firearms and either lock them up so that they could not be accessed, or dismantle them so that they were inoperable. These prior regulations rankled firearms owners, who are already permitted to carry weapons on state property, US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, so long as this is permissible under state laws. These lands intertwined with national parks and refuges causing confusion and making visitor compliance difficult.
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The Interior Department decided to change the regulation upon the request of 51 Senators including Baucus, Tester, Feingold, Webb and five other democrats. According to the Interior Department, the regulation recognizes that 48 states allow citizens to carry concealed firearms, and that the Department should "make every effort to give the greatest respect to the democratic judgments of state legislatures with respect to concealed firearms."
Interior received 125,000 comments on the new proposed regulation. While the majority were supportive, some commentators objected on aesthetic and environmental grounds. They asserted that there was no reason to allow visitors to carry firearms for personal safety since visitors were statistically unlikely to be victims of violent crimes. While the Department agreed that crime rates were still relatively low, it observed that "current statistics show an alarming increase in criminal activity" on some of these lands, and noted: "in 2007 for instance, the National Park Service reported 8 murders, 43 forceable rapes, 57 robberies and 274 instances of aggravated assault." The Department found no reason to believe that concealed carry would lead to greater poaching, or detract from the experience of visitors who do not like guns.