WASHINGTON — Park rangers, retirees and conservation groups are protesting a plan by the Interior Department to reconsider regulations restricting loaded guns in national parks.

The groups say current regulations requiring that visitors to national parks render their weapons inaccessible were working and have made national parks among the safest places in America.

“Loaded guns are not needed and are not appropriate in our national parks,” said Doug Morris, a retired park superintendent and member of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.

The plan to reconsider the gun regulations “could break what is not broken and change the nature of our national parks,” Morris said Monday.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday that his department will review gun laws on lands administered by the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials will draw up new rules by April 30 for public comment, Kempthorne said in a letter to 50 senators who requested the review.

The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates hailed the announcement as the first step to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks.

“Law-abiding citizens should not be prohibited from protecting themselves and their families while enjoying America’s national parks and wildlife refuges,” said Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist.

A Kempthorne spokesman emphasized the review was in its early stages, but said it made sense to update regulations that were last changed in the early 1980s.

“It’s appropriate to look at updating these regulations, to bring them into conformity with state laws” on guns use, said Chris Paolino, an Interior Department spokesman.

Conservation groups and park rangers disagreed, saying the plan amounted to surrender to the NRA.

The gun ban “has not been a major issue at national parks in recent years,” said Bryan Faehner of the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group.

The restrictions, which require that guns be unloaded and placed somewhere that is not easily accessible, such as in a car trunk, “were reasonable then and are reasonable now,” Faehner said. “This is not about guns. It’s not about parks. It’s a hardball political issue injected by the NRA in an election year,” he said.

Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who organized the effort to overturn the ban, said he was pleased that Kempthorne — a former Idaho governor and senator — was “taking steps to uphold the rights of citizens under the Second Amendment and eliminate inconsistent regulations.”

Crapo and other lawmakers had complained to Kempthorne that the existing guidelines were “confusing, burdensome and unnecessary.”

The dispute over guns in parks has spilled into the Senate, where it is holding up a vote on a massive public lands bill. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has sponsored an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry loaded, accessible firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has blocked a vote on the amendment, saying it is not related to the underlying bill, which would expand wilderness protection in several Western states and establish national heritage areas in several other states, among dozens of provisions.

Democrats also accuse Coburn of bad faith, saying he only raised the politically charged gun issue after the letters to Kempthorne were made public.

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On the Net:

National Park Service: www.nps.gov

National Park Conservation Association: www.npca.org