Big Game

Remember all those wonderful photographs of the young princeling Trumplings, posing with the corpses of the handsome animals they'd plugged while on limo safaris around the world? Remember Junior with the elephant's tail? Well, if the administration run by their father has anything to say about it, wealthy spalpeens like the two of them are not going to have to go to all the fuss and bother of leaving the country to kill animals more handsome than themselves. It appears that the U.S. Department of the Interior has decided to turn the National Parks into free fire zones, the equivalent of taxpayer funded game ranches similar to the one at which Dick Cheney once ventilated his friend's face. McClatchy has all the details.

  Charles P Pierce

“Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act”??

Under the bill, the National Park Service would be prevented from regulating the hunting of bears and wolves in Alaska wildlife preserves, including the practice of killing bear cubs in their dens. It also would be prevented from regulating commercial and recreational fishing within park boundaries and from commenting on development projects outside park boundaries that could affect the parks.

[...]

Agency officials were told they could not repeat their concerns to Congress, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who obtained the memo and provided a copy to McClatchy.

  McClatchy

If this administration doesn't like leaks, it should stop trying to make outrageous rules.

Heather Swift, an Interior Department spokeswoman, rejected that claim. In an email, she said: “At no point did the Department tell the NPS not to communicate with Congress. In fact, the document in question is not even addressed to Congress. The document was an early internal draft meant to express the Department's position on a legislative proposal.”

An early draft which would have been put through had no one leaked it.

In this case, the Trump administration is going to bat for the National Rifle Association and sporting groups that have close ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump Jr. and Trump himself.

“Expanding access to National Parks and public lands for hunting, fishing, and recreation is and remains a top priority of this administration,” said Swift.

[...]

More recently, the Trump administration overturned a National Park Service policy that allowed 20 parks to ban sales of plastic water bottles, to reduce litter.

And look what else is in that proposed act:

Introduced this year by U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., the SHARE act includes a controversial standalone bill, the Hearing Protection Act, which would make it easier and cheaper for gun owners to purchase silencers.

Silencers are "hearing protection."