YAWWWWWWWNNNNN...Where Am I?

I am manfully struggling to wake up at home for the first time in what seems like forever...but I've finished the 5-week Long Run for this year and, starting next week, will be back on my "normal" travel schedule, which is only moderately crazy. I now have to figure out what crises have stacked up from me here...good things going on, however. We've just about finished the retooling of COWBOYS for 2010, and with a bit of luck I'll be making an announcement on a new series, my 5th, pretty soon.

In the meantime, I thought I'd give you something to cause your blood to boil this Monday AM...I'm sitting at home in my chair with an adult beverage flipping through the shambles of the Denver Post when I came across this bit of idiocy from Joanne Ditmer, one of their dinosaurs who allegedly covers "environmental issues," on guns in national parks: 

National parks are rare treasures. They offer havens of solitude and sanctuary. They're not meant to be places for the next shootout at the OK Corral.

Wildlife can be shot, petroglyphs damaged, people injured. Talk about "responsible sportsmen" all you want, but the reality to many of us is that if someone has a gun, inevitably he will want to shoot at something.

Wow! I hadn't thought of that...see, if you've got a gun you eventually have to shoot something, like a treasured petroglyph or maybe a group of birdwatchers. I understand now! Ms. Ditmer goes on:

That's not reassuring to those of us law-abiding citizens who view guns as possible disasters.

Midnight gunshots at a campground in Sequoia National Park a couple of summers ago brought rangers to the site, relates Bill Wade, who spent 32 years with the National Park Service. They found a camper who thought he had seen a bear, so fired at least nine shots in the campground, filled with more than 300 campers. Fortunately, no one was injured. Wade noted that guns, particularly handguns, are "a very, very poor defense against bears."

"We'll see how it affects visitation," said Bryan Faehner, NPCA associate director. "With more firearms, families may not go, and the same for international visitors. They come to see our national parks as our greatest assets."

It is a sad step backward to demean national parks from their status as peaceful sanctuaries to just another place to carry firearms.

Is it any wonder the MSM are on the rocks? Dan Haley is the Editorial Page Editor, and you can reach him at dhaley@denverpost.com. Be nice, but suggest to him that Ms. Ditmer's comments on "responsible sportsmen" is offensive and patently untrue. You might suggest that the egregious libeling of any other group of people would never be allowed by a newspaper like the Post, or what the Post once was.