I spent 32 years with the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior, serving as a ranger, a park manager and also as a special agent. Currently there are proposals in the U.S. Congress and within the U.S. Department of the Interior which seek to allow visitors to carry loaded firearms, including concealed ones, in our national parks in accordance with state laws. This is an outrageous proposal and an attempt by the National Rifle Association to advance their agenda by inventing a problem that does not exist.

These proposals should be shelved for many reasons:

• Loaded firearms have been prohibited in national parks since the 1930s. These rules work, and have long contributed to the indisputable fact that our national parks are among the safest places in America. They have also been an essential part of our efforts to protect wildlife and prevent poaching. Current regulations already permit the transport of unloaded firearms through national parks.
• Under the regulations advocated by the NRA, park wildlife would be in far greater danger, as inexperienced visitors would arm themselves and use lethal force when perceiving even the slightest threat from a bison, a bear, an alligator, or even a smaller animal.
• Equally dangerous, routine disagreements in campgrounds, parking lots, restaurants and lodges are more likely to turn lethal, just as they too often do in the cities and rural areas around parks where state laws provide for easy access to loaded firearms.

The NRA's proposal demonstrates total disregard for how our society values its national parks. It is clear that previous generations of Americans meant these places to be special. Our national parks should not become simply another notch in the NRA gun belt.

New Mexicans who want to keep visitors and wildlife in national parks safe should contact their elected officials, along with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, and express their opposition to changing the regulations that have served the National Park Service well for nearly 100 years.

Photographer Tony Bonanno is a member of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. He lives in Santa Fe.