Underplayed Story of the Day

It's only prudent, when Smokey the Bear is packing heat...
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Seriously, though, the Park service has enough trouble with people abusing alcohol in the parks. Throw in some guns and we're in for some headlines.

Missed the link:
http://tinyurl.com/qcf7l7

So my question is this. How do the Parks currently go about enforcing the ban? Do they pat people down at the gates? Do the Rangers write tickets if the encounter someone cleaning their revolver by the campfire?
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I'm not much of a fan of guns but the whole thing strikes me as meaningless symbolism rather than any serious attempt to alter people's behavior.
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And as mentioned the other day, it is a pretty blatant abuse of the legislative process.

Barack Obama is becoming my kind of President everyday. Imagine that!

As I said before Rusty hopefully, for Obama's sake, you and all your right wing buddies will be able to replace all the America hating lefties, who will no longer be voting for him, or sending money, or actively campaigning. But you never know, just before the next election he may decide to throw a bone to those who actually put him in office.

KT:
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I guess all sorts of rightists will stop calling Barack Obama the great Socialist-Fascist Satan now, right?
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Dirks:
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I'm not much of a fan of guns but the whole thing strikes me as meaningless symbolism rather than any serious attempt to alter people's behavior.
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I'm not much of a fan of gun-prohibitionists, but the whole thing strikes me as meaningless symbolism, too.
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What it comes down to is this.
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Gun control and conservation groups have urged the administration to insist on a credit card bill without the gun proposal. They have also joined top House Democrats in lamenting the inability of Senate Democrats to prevent Republicans from adding such politically charged proposals to unrelated legislation. A gun measure has also tied up a bill granting the District of Columbia full voting representation in the House, and Republicans are readying other gun rights initiatives for future consideration.
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“I wish there could be more courage and leadership from our friends on the Hill,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, saying he believed that lawmakers were overestimating the gun lobby's political might.

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Yep, you guessed it. Harry Reid has struck again.

It is symbolism but not in the way I think you meant Paul. What it symbolizes is that from now on when Democrats have major legislation they want to get passed that Republicans can use it to push through gun legislation that has nothing to do with it, just so Harry Reid gets his guaranteed numbers. In the article you can basically see that now the Republicans are salivating over all of the gun legislation they will be able to push through in this manner. I wonder how many times Democrats used such tactics to get things they wanted passed. I would bet they never did and the few times they tried the Republican leadership told them to get bent. This was most likely just a trial balloon for Republicans, the next go around I would expect something inserted like allowing students to carry guns on campus.

Whats really stupid about this is I don't even think the majority of gun owners give a sh*t about being allowed to carry guns in national parks. Its not like they can hunt there. And many of these people have kids and while they believe in being able to protect their home how they see fit, are probably not too keen on going to a park with their family around a bunch of people toting guns. This might have been the one issue where Democrats wouldn't catch as much hell when it comes to gun rights. But they still caved. Pathetic.

Karen
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The point I am making isn't about whether Democrats voted for it. They obviously did. My point is how many of them voted for it just to avoid getting dinged by the NRA? How many of them really think its important for people to be able to carry guns in national parks? Its the same as the FISA bill from last year if you ask me. This was a CYA vote. If it wasn't then my question is why didn't one of those 28 Democrats who voted for it actually introduce and or sponsor the legislation all on their own?

Thanks to Reid now us real Americans have a defense when all those gitmo detainees are released into the parks by the magic socialist.
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Way to go Harry. I know you did all you good for the minority party you love to support.

Karen
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I understand what you are saying. I don't think you are getting what I am saying. What I am saying is OF COURSE its regional because Dem Senators in Southern states are the ones who think they can be dinged the most by the NRA. But how many of them are really big time gun rights advocates? Since you used my state of Florida as an example look back and Bill Nelson's voting record. He isn't some big time gun rights advocate. As a matter of fact in the past he has supported "sensible gun control measures". And here is the thing, if these Senators were gung ho about voting for allowing people to carry guns into national parks, why did it need to be tacked on to a very popular credit card reform bill? Hell with 67 votes couldn't it have passed as a stand alone bill? Of course it couldn't have.

Why is it that people so firmly believe things that are demonstrably not true?
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I'm not talking about a difference of opinion on difficult, technical questions such as whether or not proposing a 39% tax rate on $250k salaries makes on a socialist or not.
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I'm not talking about people who are convinced that Obama and the Democrats are "going to take their guns away", or that Obama wants to free the terrorists on American soil as Harry Reid said yesterday. Where does this crap come from?

choska:

That crap comes from lazy reporters, who will repeat uncritically anything they're told by interested parties – particularly if it fuels or creates controversy.

The real under played story here is how a lot of consumers are going to get screwed by the credit card industry because of this bill. All those who pay their bills on time are considered freeloaders by the credit card industry. The credit card issuers will make up their fees in another puntive way. This is the only business model they know.
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In short, the bill will reward the guilty and punish the innocent.

most interesting vote is Gillibrand's "nay" vote -- she's considered pretty much a pawn of the NRA, and the fact that she voted against the amendment suggests that she's feeling major heat in terms of a primary challenge....

What I want to know is:
Why the hell is there a provision about concealed weapons in a *$%@ing credit card bill?!?!? This unrelated amendment crap is my biggest complaint about the way our government works. It's the root cause of so many other problems; it makes our laws unnecessarily complex, and it makes it much harder for the average voter to understand the policy positions of election candidates. It's truly frustrating, and I'd love to see some new congressional rules that require bills to be more tightly focused.

Abuse of the legislative process? Wow.
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Hey guys, check this out--http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/kick_obama_off_campus_1.asp

Insert "dyslexic Senate – right to arm bears" joke here.