With the latest debate over whether the National Park Service should allow visitors to carry live weapons in the national park system, much has been made over whether parks are safe. While even one murder is too many, the crime statistics for a park system that last year attracted some 277 million visitors would seem to indicate parks are relatively safe havens from violent crime.
During 2006, when 273 million visitors toured the parks, 11 deaths were investigated across the system. Two involved women who had been pushed off cliffs (one at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and one at Lake Mead National Recreation Area), one was a suicide (at Golden Gate National Recreation Area), and one was the victim of a DUI accident (in Yellowstone National Park).
National Park Service records also show that one of the 11 deaths, reported in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, involved a stabbing that was spawned by an alcohol-fueled altercation. Great Smoky also was the setting of a fatal shooting of another woman with three others arrested for the crime.
The suicide at Golden Gate involved a man who "began shooting at hang gliders. He did not hit any of the hang gliders, but then he shot a stranger. Then he turned the gun on himself."
At the Blue Ridge Parkway, a woman parked at an overlook and wearing headphones while studying for final exams "was killed by a handgun by a suspect on a killing spree," the Park Service said. In another case involving the parkway, the body of an individual shot and killed outside the parkway was dumped there.
At Amistad National Recreation Area, a woman was found floating in a reservoir in about 5 feet of water. "She appeared to have blunt force trauma to the head and was possibly stabbed," the agency said.
The last two murders were reported in Washington, D.C., area park units. In one case a victim died from a gunshot wound to the head, in the other U.S. Park Police found a partial human skull, with an apparent gunshot wound, on the shoreline of the Anacostia River, a crime that didn't necessarily occur in the park system.
Most folks, I think, would agree that the suicide, two pushing victims, and the DUI victim couldn't have been prevented if guns were allowed to be carried in the parks. And, of course, there was the victim who was murdered outside the Blue Ridge Parkway. That lowers to six the number of violent deaths investigated in the parks, one of which involved a stabbing in a drunken brawl, an outcome that could have turned out just the same -- or worse-- if either individual was carrying a gun.
During 2006 there also were 320 assaults without weapons, 1,950 weapons offenses, 843 public intoxication cases, and 5,752 liquor law violations. How many of those might have turned deadly were concealed carry allowed in the park system?
I think much of the concern over this move by the National Rifle Association to see visitors allowed to carry loaded weapons does not center on the majority of the "law-abiding" gun owners in the country, but rather around the accidents waiting to happen involving folks who either aren't so law-abiding or so careful.
Comments
Nicely said Jim. It is amazing to me that it is so incredibly difficult for some people to understand such a simple concept. Please continue voicing your opinion on this issue. You have a very good way with words.
NRA propaganda? Because the country is so "stressed" at the moment? Right, I'm sure people are thinking"Oh, I sure hope I'm not adding to the stressful situation present in the country when I use this handgun to defend myself against this robber/attempted rapist/physical assailant/rabid animal." If you're being attacked, the stress level in the country has just jumped anyway, because YOU'RE the one being attacked, and therefore STRESSED! Personally, I'd rather the bad guy be the one "stressed" from a gunshot wound, rather than myself from a knife in the heart or seeing a loved one killed in front of my eyes. But because the NPS has made their domain a place to "unload and unpack...leaving the heavy metal at home," guess who sees a bunch of easy pickings in a remote area, far from help?
In those places (indeed, in many places), you cannot count on police, park rangers, or even Good Samaritans. In those cases, YOU...are...IT!
Citizens can always count on wisdom and swift justice from Big Brother. Right? But, oh-by-the-way, some "public land" isn't safe for law abiding citizens because criminals are permitted to reign supreme. Still, it is against the law for law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed firearm in a National Park. Personal interest ahead of the law, you say? No. A right. Just as slaves always had the right to their lives, liberty, etc... In spite of the laws which denied them their freedoms.
Nicely said Hallie.
Frank - you indicated that you were puzzled why you didn't hear more stories about people legitimately using their firearms to defend themselves. Yet, when you were pointed to a reference for those stories you discount it. The stories that are cited all have references to reputable news organizations - it should not matter whether the site that accumulates those references is "pro gun" or "anti gun". I submit to you that everything is just a statistic until it happens to you.
Brad, Russia and Mexico are both countries that limit possession so severely that "normal" citizens are really not allowed to own them (much less carry concealed). Yet the murder rate for both of those countries is much higher that that of the US. Almost no Russian civilians own firearms, but the number of homicides is three to four times as high as in the US. The number of homicides in Mexico also seems to hang around 13-14/100K (5-6/100K in the US). If our neighbor to the north limits firearms and has a lower murder rate, what does that tell us about our neighbor to the south? Perhaps the answer is more beer, less guns, eh? Unfortunately I think that if people will continue to kill each other regardless of the tools that are available - if you take one away they'll find another.
Tim,
If you could cite the sources of your statistics that'd be helpful.
Here's a blurb from a story that ran last year in the Observer newspaper in Great Britain. It's a disturbing portrait of how others see us:
And here are some statistics from the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence:
You can find the entire report here.
Frank wrote: This is all meaningless. What is really telling is the quote from Anonymous above, "You have to go out seven decimal places on a calculator to determine what percentage of Park visitors got killed in 2007."
Actually, it's not telling at all, not in the least place because neither Anon nor you cited any kind of figures to provide a frame of reference. You mention Los Angeles as a comparatively dangerous place, so let's look at that.
In 2006, 1,012 reported homicides occurred in Los Angeles County; the California state government's population bureau estimated the resident population of the county to be ~10.3 million as of 01-Jan-2007. Going by these figures alone, you would (to paraphrase Anonymous) "have to go out four decimal places on a calculator to determine what percentage of Los Angeles County residents got killed [i.e. were victims of homicide on Park grounds] in 2006." But that's not a fair comparison, because we're only looking at the resident population, and not counting visitors to LA County. According to LA Inc., there were 25.4 million "overnight visitors" to LA County in 2006. If you add up the residents and the "overnight visitors," you "have to go out five decimal places."
However, LA Inc. arrives at its number of "overnight visitors" by counting hotel stays. The figure therefore does not take into account "overnight visitors" who stayed with friends or family, and more importantly, it does not take into account residents of neighboring counties (Orange, Riverside, San Bernadino, Ventura) who visited Los Angeles County to work, shop, visit a museum, go to dinner or what have you, and then go home at the end of the day or evening. And to make an adequate comparison with "Park visitors," you almost certainly have to count that sort of visitor to LA County as well. In fact, in the case of "day trippers" from neighboring counties, you may have to count them multiple times, i.e. for every time that they set foot in LA County. Commuters in particualr wouldreally ratchet up the number of "visitors," as they would typically "visit" up to 250 times a year! See, I strongly suspect that when the NPS claims there were 273 million "visitors" to National Parks in 2006, they really mean visits; in website terms, they're counting "page hits" rather than "unique visitors." By which I mean that if a single individual visits five different National Parks in a given year (or visits one Park five times), that one visitor will counted five times in the NPS's statistics. I don't believe that the NPS has the means (nor the inclination) to gather and process the information required to differentiate between five people making one visit and one person making five visits. Think about it; 273 million people is over 90% of the US population. Sure, those visitors include non-US residents, but if we look at the LA County visitor statistics, we see that "international visitors" comprised between 1/5 and 1/6 of "overnight visitors." Even if, for the sake of the argument, we assume that 1/5 of visitors to National Parks in 2006 were non-US citizens resident outside the US, do you think it's credible that over 70% (4/5 * 90% = 72%) of the US population made one or more visits to a National Park in that year? Personally, I'd be highly surprised if that were the case.
The long and short of it is that while one might "have to go out seven decimal places on a calculator to determine what percentage of Park visitors got killed [i.e. were victims of homicide on Park grounds] in 2006," it is not inconceivable that that same statement might be equally applicable to the entire population of residents and visitors to LA County, especially if commuters, diners, club-goers, etc. from neighboring counties are counted as a "visitor" every time they enter LA County.
How about we try approaching the comparison from the other direction? Typically, violent crime rates are calculated by number of incidents per 100,000 head of the resident population. The LA County homicide rate for 2006, based on 1,012 reported incidents in a resident population of ~10.3 million would have been ~10.2. Problem is, the National Parks system doesn't have a resident human population, or at least, not one that bears any relationship to the number of people in the National Parks system at any given time. But at least we can make some approximation as to how many people are present, on average, in National Parks on any given day, which gives us something that resembles a resident population. Taking that 273 million visits figure and dividing it by 365, we can conclude that the average daily population of the National Parks is ~747,945. There were 9 cases of murder/manslaughter that occurred in National Parks in 2006, so (9 / 747,945) x 100,000 gives us a homcide rate per 100,000 head of the population of 1.2. That's significantly lower than the LA County homicide rate, but many rural areas of the US probably don't have significantly higher homicide rates on average (I say "on average" because in a county with a population of 50,000, say, the difference between a homicide rate of 0.0 and one of 2.0 for a given year is literally a single homicide).