Park Carry
Remember, you’re crazy to want a gun in a park what with all the animals made from Nerf running around:
in 2006, national parks were the scenes of 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies and hundreds of other violent crimes.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
“But a coalition of park rangers and park service retirees say the amendment could jeopardize public safety and make it more difficult to stop poaching.”
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2008/02/allowing_firear.php
With 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies and hundreds of other violent crimes in a one year span I’d say public safety’s already jepardized BECAUSE of the national park gun ban.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
275,581,547 visits in 2007. While not insignificant to the people who were killed and their families, that’s a very low crime rate.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Mj,
If the passage of this law would save just one child…
/sarcasm
March 4th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Oh really? The national murder rate is 5.6 per 100,000. You would have to adjust that 275M figure for actual duration of visit in order to make it comparable to per capita crime rates. Do you know the mean duration of visit?
The rate seems high to me — many visits are day trips which are short in duration, and inherently safer than overnight visits, due to the larger crowds. What is the mean overnight population of the National Park system? That would give you a better statistic.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:25 am
There were 13,649,596 overnight stays that year. Based on that number, that’s a 0.44/100,000 murder rate for. But that’s a hinky statistic.
There were 1,205,394,969 recreation hours spent in National Parks in 2006. With 272,623,980 total recreation visits at an average of 4.42 hours. The adjustment factor would be 5.43 (24/4.42). If you divide the total recreation visits by this number you get 50,206,994. That’s not the adjusted population though as these folks did not spend the entire year in the park. So, 50,206,994/365 gives you an average daily population of 137553. On the surface, though, it looks like the parks are similar to a small city, except that small city has a murder rate of 44.34/100000.
Here’s the problem with that whole thing: The data that is readily available doesn’t tell you where the crime is occurring. What kinds of park service facilities? Large natural conservation parks like GSMNP or Yellowstone? Or parks in urban areas which make up a large part of what the National Park Service is in charge of? You’d have to adjust as well by the variable areal extents of the parks somehow.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Note the stats I worked out above use a bad number for the number of violent deaths in the national parks in 2006. There were only 11 it seems. I used 61 for some reason. Still, that’s 8/100000. Of those 11, one was a suicide.