Hearing of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands of the House Natural Resources Committee - Legislative Hearing on H.R. 919, H.R. 938, H.R. 1278, H.R. 2240, H.R. 2489, H.R. 3411 and H.R. 3440
Statement
Today we are reviewing three bills that address unique land management issues with the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) and four with the Park Service. In order to accommodate those Members with tight schedules, I will forego a lengthy opening statement and jus t make a couple br i e f comments about one of the bills of which I am cosponsor, H.R. 3440 - The Recreational Shooting Protection Act.
This bill is another in a series of our trust but verify approaches when dealing with this administration. I t is no secret to me and many of my colleagues that this administration is hostile to the individual right guaranteed in the Second Amendment. From the tactics and leadership at DOJ that brought us the "Fast and Furious" calamity and the State Department's prevention of the re-importation of old surplus M- l Garands to the appointment of anti-gun advocates to our judiciary and now BLM looking for reasons to prevent target shooting on our public lands, we have seen what this administration thinks of the Second Amendment.
This is an election year and it appears that the Administration wants to put of f a lot of decisions
until after the votes are in. They know that the wide scale closure of our public lands for recreational shooting would not sit well with a Western electorate that enjoys this historic, traditional and legitimate activity on our public lands. The trouble is, I am not sure the Obama
administration would have backed down and abandoned their anti-sportsmen policy were it not
an election year. There appears to be a real penchant by this administration to manage the use of
our public lands based on personal preference rather than the multiple uses mandated by law.
While I am glad that the BLM will for now abandon their ill-conceived policy, my colleagues and I want to make sure it is not revisited at a later date. If it's not a good time to do it in an election year, it's not a good time to do it at all.
Again, in an effort to keep this short for the sake of my colleagues, I will stop there and I now
recognize the Ranking Member for any opening remarks he would like to make at this time.
Source