not available to purchase the switches. The park ranger/armorer told us that beyond mentioning it to the supervisory park ranger, he took no other action to obtain the selector switches.
The park ranger/armorer also told us that after carrying his new rifle on patrol for a few weeks, he removed the original selector switch and installed a personally owned semi-automatic selector switch to make the rifle comply with policy. He was worried about carrying a fully automatic rifle and the consequences if he were part of an "officer-involved shooting." The NPS firearms program manager at FLETC told us that NPS policy prohibits employees from putting parts from personally owned weapons on U.S. Government-owned weapons and vice versa. She was not sure whether this is written in NPS policy, but thought it was "automatically assumed."
The park ranger/armorer told us that after installing the switch, he carried the rifle in semiautomatic mode while on patrol, but when he went to the range he put the original selector switch back in so he could fire the rifle in fully automatic mode. He could not remember the details about the purchase of the semi-automatic selector switches, but a few years passed before they were ordered. He told us that he did not change the selector switches of any of the other M4 rifles; he thought that the second park ranger we interviewed had changed them.
According to the second park ranger, shortly after the rifles arrived, he learned that some had been converted to semi-automatic to comply with NPS policy. He told us that those converted rifles were issued to the seasonal park rangers at MNP, but he did not know the rangers' names.
He said that permanent rangers at MNP were issued fully automatic rifles and they carried them on patrol, but he could not remember how long they carried them. He told us that later he ordered new semi-automatic selector switches and converted all of the remaining M-4s to fire only in semi-automatic mode.
The deputy superintendent told us that he first became aware that the rifles were fully automatic in 2013. He recalled hearing about it from the chief ranger, and shortly thereafter he learned that the supervisory park ranger needed to purchase parts to convert the rifles from fully automatic to semi-automatic. The deputy superintendent explained that he had received requests for weapons parts from the supervisory park ranger, but he was never told that the parts were needed to correct a policy violation and to convert fully automatic rifles to semi-automatic. The deputy superintendent told us that if he had known the rifles violated NPS policy, he would have immediately purchased the parts required to convert them.
Use on Patrol and at the Range
The supervisory park ranger told us that in the interest of "officer safety" he allowed fulltime park rangers at MNP to carry the fully automatic rifles with them in their patrol vehicles. He said that it was the "lesser of two evils," as his choices were either to have them continue to carry the unreliable M-16s or to violate the policy and allow them to carry the new fully automatic M-4s.
According to the supervisory park ranger, he told all the rangers to fire the new rifles in fully automatic mode at the range to familiarize themselves with the rifles. He said that he told the rangers not to tell anyone that they were carrying fully automatic rifles. He was concerned that
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