By Matthew Daly
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a stinging defeat for gun-control advocates, Congress has voted to allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.
The House approved the measure, 279-147, on Wednesday, one day after the Senate acted.
A total of 105 Democrats in the House joined 174 Republicans in supporting the gun measure, which essentially restores a Bush administration policy that briefly allowed loaded guns in national parks earlier this year.
(Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, whose 6th Congressional District includes the North Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park, voted against, saying the low incidences of crime in national parks contradicts those who have argued that people need loaded firearms to be safe.)
The measure, which is included in a bill imposing new restrictions on credit card companies, allows licensed gun owners to bring firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges as long as they are allowed by state law.
The vote was a bitter disappointment for gun-control proponents, who watched as a Democratic-controlled Congress handed a victory to gun-rights advocates that they did not achieve under Republican rule.
Many blamed the National Rifle Association, which pushed hard for the gun law.
“The NRA is basically taking over the House and Senate,” said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., a leading gun-control supporter. “If the NRA wins, the American people are going to be the ones who lose.”
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said liberals might believe that, “but the American people won’t buy it.”
“The fact is American gun owners are simply citizens who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights without running into confusing red tape,” said Hastings, who represents an area in Washington state’s midsection.
Hastings and other Republicans said the bill merely aligns national parks and wildlife refuges with regulations governing the national forests and property controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
The GOP called the current policy outdated and confusing to those who visit public lands, noting that merely traveling from state-owned parks to national parks meant some visitors were violating the law.
