The Times isn’t a newspaper so much as it’s an organ of far left politics. Today’s evidence is an unserious blog post that sets out to smack a few Republicans, the Interior Department and the NRA for pushing to make it legal to carry firearms in national parks.

A Worse Day Than Usual to Promote Guns in National Parks

The Interior Department was expected to announce today that it would begin re-evaluating regulations that currently prohibit visitors from carrying loaded weapons in America’s national parks.

The agency’s plans were preempted, however, by yesterday’s news that a gunman in Illinois had killed five students and wounded 16 others before killing himself.

And so, out of respect for the dead and injured, who were killed by a handgun and a shotgun, the Interior Department has —what? Changed its mind? Thought better of its plans? No. It has merely postponed its announcement until next week.

Nowhere in the post is any mention that NIU is a gun free zone. Also, nowhere in the post is any mention or hint that the Times is aware that college campuses and national parks are not the same thing. The image the Times probably hopes to convey is of gun-toters waltzing around urban national historic sites and the like with impunity, but that’s not what the rule change would be about. Fifty-one senators have requested the relaxation of rules governing firearms in national parks because many national parks are vast wildernesses inhabited by dangerous wildlife. Hikers, campers and others in the park should have the legal option of carrying firearms to protect themselves from such wildlife as well as criminals who might enter the parks to prey on them. Criminals will be less likely to do that if there’s a chance that the park occupants are armed. While this might lead to an increase in poaching, the truth is that poaching itself is already illegal, and if we have to weigh the protection of human life against the possibility of poaching, that should be an easy call to make.

The Times also fails to mention that the Illinois shooter appears to have been a mentally ill man who was off his meds. Fox is reporting that he may have bought his firearms from the same Internet gun shop as the VT shooter. That strikes me as a very relevant set of facts that the Times conveniently left out.