America is awash with guns and the result is too often tragic. Yet for some people the remedy for too much gun violence is more guns.

Worried about terrorists hijacking aircraft? Arm the pilots. Want to cut the number of shootings on college campuses? Arm students and faculty. If Wyatt Earp came back from the dead, he might think that all of America is becoming Dodge City.

It's guns, always guns, and never a thought to blaming gun culture. The latest example of perverse gun logic focuses on national parks.

Encouraged by the National Rifle Association, the puppet-master of Congress, 50 senators urged the Interior Department to reconsider rules restricting loaded guns in national parks. Not surprisingly, the department said last week that it has agreed to look at a ban that's been in place for a quarter-century on lands administered by the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The next step will be drawing up rules by April 30 for public comment. Given the biases of the Bush administration, and the desires of half the Senate, it doesn't take much imagination to imagine what form these rules might take: More loaded guns in more hands in what are now some of America's most peaceful places.

This would be a solution to no discernible problem. One reason advanced for the change is to make the regulations in national parks better conform to the law on other federal property and on state public lands, but that wouldn't rally 50 senators.

No, this is really about taking Second Amendment idolatry to irrational extremes. National parks have not been in the news as places where mad gunmen have caused carnage, but that didn't stop Chris W. Cox, the NRA's chief lobbyist, from saying, "Law-abiding citizens should not be prohibited from protecting themselves and their families. ..."

Current restrictions apply only to loaded guns; parks visitors can bring firearms if they are unloaded and kept in a place not easily accessible such as a car trunk, which is a fair compromise. To give free reign to loaded guns threatens to complicate and endanger the lives of park rangers. Opposition to this folly comes from their ranks and also retired rangers and conservation groups.

It also should give pause to the American people. It seems the firearms god will not be appeased until its culture and values have been extended to every last refuge. When that happens, we won't be more safe, but less -- because, despite what they say, guns do kill people, plenty of people.