Pro-gun forces won a major victory in Washington on Wednesday when Congress voted to allow people to carry loaded weapons in most national parks and refuges.

The action was a major defeat for supporters of gun control, who earlier in the year won a court reversal of a Bush administration policy that first lifted the restrictions on loaded firearms on those public lands.

Some Alaskans -- their minds filled with visions of pistol-packing tourists climbing aboard Denali National Park buses armed to the teeth -- had joined with a variety of national organizations in challenging the Bush decision to allow guns in the parks.

But National Park Service officials in Alaska never expressed much concern about the change.

Legislation creating vast new parks and refuges in Alaska in 1980 specifically left millions of acres open to firearms, and there have been no serious problems, according to Alaska region park service spokesman John Quinley.

Rangers in places such as Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Lake Clark Park and Preserve and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve are accustomed to running into people carrying loaded guns. And the agency has long given a tacit endorsement to people packing firearms into some of these areas for survival and safety reasons.