Thanks god Congress and the President have finally come to their senses about the Second Amendment.
I was beginning to fear I might go my entire life without being able to exercise my God-given right to carry my loaded AR-15 into the White House, never mind my shoulder-holstered Super Redhawk.
With President Obama about to sign HR 627 into law, those fears have been laid to rest.
Here's what the law says:
The Secretary of the Interior shall not promulgate or enforce any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm including an assembled or functional firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System if --
(1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm; and
(2) the possession of the firearm is in compliance with the law of the State in which the unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System is located.
- and since the
White House is a unit of the National Park System, and since the
laws of the District of Columbia - especially since
clarified last year by Tony Scalia - allow me to have my Glock 9 or my
Alaskan Hunter, I guess Congress did exactly the right thing in naming this new provision of the Credit Card Reform Act of 2009. They entitled Section 512 of the bill,
Protecting Americans from Violent Crime.
Just so.
Strong work, Congress. President Obama, you should feel safer already.
Update [2009-5-21 20:30:33 by occams hatchet]: My wildly improbable scenario might well be impossible, actually, according to several commenters downthread.
Some commenters have provided reassuring feedback illustrating that my nightmare scenario isn’t really possible at the White House, because certain law-enforcement agencies of the federal government would override the National Park Service. homogenius, for example, points out that the management of the White House unit of the NPS precludes my scenario.
Yellowstone, however, as pointed out by Omir the Storyteller, might be vulnerable because of gun laws in the three states that park spills into: Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. My favorite parks – Yosemite and Joshua Tree – being in California, are, according to Meteor Blades presumably covered by California’s ban on loaded guns in parks, although as you’ll see from indigoblueskies’ responses, that may or may not be true.
Great discussion. Thanks, y’all.