Girl Shot in Yellowstone Died From Bullet Fired From Father's Gun

[2naSalit]

15. Agreed

The NP system handles all of these legal issues when they occur inside the boundary of said park, it's national forests and BLM land where the states can get involved. The majority of the park is in Wyoming so the park's jurisdiction applies. The portion of the park that is in Idaho (two miles wide by about 40 miles long) is a voting district with no residents and is the one small patch of the US where you can't be held accountable for crimes because there are no persons who could be called in for a jury, a little known technicality there.

Infractions dealt with at Mammoth are often dealt with more harshly than not for most. I know that a speeding ticket in the park is more than a slap on the wrist aside form travel expenses etc since the court isn't in session all year and I think it's three sessions a year or something like that. I've never had to go there but I know some folks from around here who have.

Certainly the amendment is stupid and a play for funding by the NRA. The prior regulation was a pretty stout deal and few violated it. Most of my neighbors and local folks are respectful of the former rule, if you were transporting a gun through the park (for folks like me who also go through the park to get from point A to point B when auto travel is allowed) most would dismantle their firearms, couldn't be loaded and not accessible while being transported. Regardless of the current rules, you still are not supposed to actually USE the gun as in discharge it within the park boundaries.

I'm interested to see how this shakes out, I suspect that there might have been a bit more to the demeanor of the parents at the time. Lots of trouble families go "camping" and bring their issues along with them and things get out of hand when in unfamiliar places more easily sometimes than when at home. There are plenty of domestic disputes among the tourons while on vacation... hell, most of those people can't drive when they get up on this part of the planet. It's like their brains just ooze out their ears by the time they get to 5K ft. elevation and it only gets worse thereafter. It's like they can't recognize stop signs. traffic lights or any other traffic control indicators that are pretty much universal throughout the country. And if you flew in to the Yellowstone area and rented a vehicle, you still have to drive some distance to get to wherever you were going and you will encounter traffic control elements... but I digress.

Anyway, I agree that the media are blowing it by blaming the the 2010 Coburn Amendment for this or at least alluding to it. But the locals don't know who this family is right now and I wonder who they are that they haven't been identified yet. And in these parts, a lot of negative news, like suicides, lack of snow, other stuff goes unreported on the national stage because the Chambers of Comm are afraid that such news will cut into profits for the gate communities by letting bad news be known so they control what news gets out. This issue probably will be put on page five of the local rags and tucked under some rug even then so it doesn't get noticed, especially since it's out-of-towners. A few years ago some Californian drove into a parking lot in a gate community and got out in front of a lot of visitors and blew his brains out with a shotgun, it was never in the local papers or anywhere else that I could find... bad news can't be told. This was let out by the Park news outlet and was only broadcast in Helena news, five hours from the park... and now a small outlet read only by a select audience.

There's a lot more to this and I suspect that this family is part of a larger dominant group in this region that is trying to protect its image.