Federal court's injunction against National Park gun ban repeal fails giggle test

Don't get me wrong. US District Court for DC Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly might have gotten the law exactly right when she temporarily reversed the administrative repeal of the National Park gun ban on the grounds that the Department of the Interior "abdicated their Congressionally-mandated obligation to evaluate all reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts, whether authorized by the Final Rule or not" [under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.]. But does this opinion pass the giggle test? The new regulation merely permits the carriage of loaded handguns - not discharge of any ammunition from them. Millions of Americans now routinely carry handguns in public in virtually every city and park in America, as well as in National Forests and on lands managed by Bureau of Land Management. Negligent discharges are extremely rare, as are discharges in defense of self or others. Could a few dozen or so possible bullets per year fired onto the 84.4 millions of acres of National Park lands possibly justify mandating environmental studies? OK, let's think about this. What if Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Ken Salazar decided that Park Rangers, currently unarmed, should start carrying side arms on DOI lands near or adjacent to the Mexican border due to rising violence from Mexican drug gangs. Would Salazar first have to conduct an environmental study before Rangers could be armed?...DC Examiner