Visitors to National Parks Can Now Carry Guns

Feb. 22, 2010— -- Hikers in the Grand Canyon, visitors to Old Faithful and anyone else sleeping at hundreds of national park campsites across the country might now be surrounded by other tourists carrying shotguns or rifles.

Thanks to a new law that took effect today, it is now legal to carry loaded guns into our national parks.

The change in federal law basically means that national park visitors must obey the federal, state, and local gun laws appropriate to the parks they are visiting. It's a sharp change to previous laws that severely restricted guns in the national parks, generally requiring them to be locked or stored.

Supporters say the law brings uniformity to the laws governing gun use on federal lands, but some gun-control advocates fear it could lead to increased violence, or at the very least upset the parks' tranquility.

Bill Wade, who heads the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said that the law brings "a very unfortunate and sad situation" to the parks.

"I just think that people go to national parks often to get away from the things they face in their everyday lives," said Wade, who spent more than 30 years in the park service including nine as the superintendent of Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.

Stay Up to Date on the Latest Travel Trends from ABC News on Twitter

Wade said that visitors are often out of their comfort zones when hiking or camping in the parks and that having loaded firearms there could lead to accidents. For instance, he asked, what happens if somebody is camping and hears a suspicious noise outside and decides to start firing at the dark shape outside their tent? Or somebody who is hiking and fires at a bear, only wounding it, and therefore making it a greater threat.

Wade said the parks are currently among the safest places in the nation. About 275 million people visited national parks in 2008, the most recent year with data available. In that time, the National Park Service reported 3,760 reported major crimes, including five homicides and 37 rapes.

"Our national parks are not the safe havens as many think they are," said Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs at the National Rifle Association, which lobbied hard for the parks' gun laws to be changed. "We think it's reasonable for those with a concealed carry permit to be able to defend themselves and their families should the need arise."