Star-Tribune Editorial Board

With all due respect to the Second Amendment, do people really need guns in national parks and (for crying out loud) wildlife refuges?

The Interior Department has prohibited people from carrying firearms in such places since the 1980s. The rationale was simple: A gun in a national park is primarily useful for poaching and other mischief.

But now this reasonable-sounding regulation has drawn fire from 47 U.S. senators, who want it revoked. As far as we can tell, the senators are trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Now, before somebody accuses us of endorsing gun control, let's make our position clear. We support people's rights to own and carry guns. You won't catch us trying to whittle away at the Second Amendment.

But the guns-in-parks rule has been in place for two decades, and we haven't heard citizens clamoring for its repeal. Reasonable people understand that this mild restriction serves a reasonable purpose.

Under the current rule, hunters can carry loaded guns in 61 national monuments and preserves where hunting is allowed. In the rest of the Park Service's 390 sites, guns can't be taken through parks unless they're dismantled or inaccessible.

A spokesman for Montana's Jon Tester, one of the 47 senators opposing the rules, painted the issue as a matter of access. Montana hunters often need to cross parts of Yellowstone on their way to legal hunting grounds, and they shouldn't have to dismantle their guns to do it, the spokesman argued.

But that appears to be a misinterpretation of the rule. A Park Service official told our reporter that hunters need only stash their guns where they're not accessible - in the car trunk, for example.

Easily accessible guns, he explained, too often wind up pointed at wildlife. Also, camping in national parks is safer if people aren't "plinking around."

Of course, the same arguments could be made for banning weapons on all public lands, or everywhere in America, for that matter. The slope is admittedly slippery.

Still, after two decades on the books, the guns-in-parks rule has not yet led America into a police state.

Why is this issue arising now? Let's hope it's not because grizzly bears have become more plentiful. Bear experts say pepper spray, not a gun, is the wisest defense against a charging griz. If packing heat emboldens visitors to encroach on bears, both bears and people will be imperiled.

So far, we haven't heard any persuasive arguments for repealing the rule. Unless the 47 senators can produce some compelling complaints against the status quo, let's leave well enough alone.