GOP Congressman Has A Solution For Bison Hurling Grandpas Into The Sky at National Parks
A Yellowstone bison threw a 65 year old grandfather eight feet into the air last week.
Days later an Indiana Republican decided the real problem in national parks isn't the wildlife at all.
His proposed fix has nothing to do with the bison and everything to do with the building right next to it.
Congress Finally Notices What's Actually Broken In Your National Park
That Indiana Republican is Rudy Yakym, and Thursday he introduced the Federal Lands Lawful Carry Act, H.R. 9719.
Texas Congressman Pat Fallon signed on as lead co-sponsor.
Their target is a federal statute that was never supposed to touch your family camping trip.
Congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act in 1988 to stop plastic guns from beating airport metal detectors.
Somehow that same law now forces a law-abiding gun owner to disarm the moment he walks into a Yellowstone visitor center, gift shop, or ranger station.
The bison don't have to check anything at the door.
https://x.com/Breaking911/status/2076164793954705679“>https://x.com/Breaking911/status/2076164793954705679
Yakym didn't mince words about what the rule actually does to people like that grandfather.
"This legislation closes a loophole that turns responsible gun owners into accidental criminals," Yakym said.
The Loophole That Turns A Camping Trip Into A Federal Crime
Right now the law is a patchwork nightmare, and Yakym has seen it firsthand in his own backyard.
Take Indiana's Whitewater Memorial State Park, sitting right next to Brookville Lake.
State law lets you carry at the park.
Walk onto the neighboring lake, which the Army Corps of Engineers controls, and you've committed a federal crime for carrying that same gun down to the boat dock.
"You should not have to check your Second Amendment right at the front door," Yakym told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
This isn't Yakym's first move against the ban, and it isn't the only fight happening right now.
The Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition sued the Trump administration back in March over the same statute.
They amended that complaint in June, arguing the rule can't survive the Supreme Court's Bruen test for so-called "sensitive places."
Yakym isn't waiting on judges to sort it out.
He told the Daily Caller News Foundation he'd rather Congress fix the problem outright than let a lawsuit drag through the courts for years.
His bill already has serious backup.
Gun Owners of America, the National Rifle Association, and the Second Amendment Foundation are all behind it.
More than 300 million people walk through national park gates every year, bison or no bison.
Congress actually fixed part of this problem back in 2010, when a Coburn-authored amendment let park visitors carry outdoors under state law.
Lawmakers never touched the indoor ban.
Fifteen years later, Yakym is finally finishing the job Congress started.
The Real Contradiction Congress Never Fixed
Democrats spent years insisting these restrictions were about safety, not politics.
That argument gets a lot harder to make when the danger in the parking lot is a two thousand pound animal, and the only place you're forced to be unarmed is the gift shop.
A grandfather just got launched into the air by a wild animal in a park where he legally could have been carrying outside but not inside the building where rangers work.
That's the contradiction Yakym's bill exposes, whether he says it out loud or not.
The Army Corps quirk matters just as much as the park buildings themselves.
Right now a hunter, a boater, or a camper can be a law-abiding citizen in one square mile and a federal criminal in the next simply because of which agency's sign is posted on the property line.
That's not a gun safety policy, that's a bureaucratic trap, and Yakym's bill rips it out by the root.
With GOA, the NRA, and SAF all lined up behind H.R. 9719, and a live lawsuit already forcing the issue in federal court, the pressure on this ban is coming from two directions at once.
Democrats and gun control groups will call this reckless.
Grandpa, still nursing a few broken bones from Yellowstone, will probably just call it common sense.
Sources:
- Harold Hutchison, "EXCLUSIVE: GOP Congressman Rudy Yakym Has National Park Gun Ban In His Crosshairs," The Daily Caller, July 16, 2026.
- Staff, "Yakym co-authors bill that would allow firearms inside buildings on federal lands," 107.3 WRSW Classic Hits, July 16, 2026.
- "H.R.9719 – 119th Congress: To authorize possession of a firearm in certain units and facilities of the Federal Government," Congress.gov, Library of Congress, July 16, 2026.
- "National Parks/National Wildlife Refuges Firearm Law," USCCA, accessed July 2026.
- Congressman Rudy Yakym, Federal Lands Lawful Carry Act press release, yakym.house.gov, July 16, 2026.
