Posted on 12/11/2004 6:07:04 AM PST by Mr. Mojo
Gun-toting, tough-talking, and anti-establishment to his muddy boot straps, Larry Mullens is an Oklahoman "good ole boy" personified.
He is also fast becoming a classic American folk hero as he takes centre stage in a revolt of gun owners that is reverberating in boardrooms across the United States. The son of one of the last of the old-style Wild West ranchers, he first fired a gun as a boy.
Now he carries his trusty Winchester in his pick-up on his way to work at a sawmill in case he comes across a coyote, a wild dog or even a wolf attacking his small herd of steers. Last year he lost five calves to wild dogs.
So it was perhaps not surprising that he was enraged when his previous employer fired him for breaking company security rules that banned guns from the company car park after they found a .38 pistol stashed behind the seat of his pick-up.
No one could have predicted that two years later he and his backers would claim an extraordinary revenge - a law allowing employees to keep guns in locked cars on company property.
Just two days after a gunman jumped on to a stage in Columbus, Ohio, and shot dead a heavy metal guitarist and three others before himself being shot dead, it might seem surprising to hear that elsewhere a state is extending gun owners' rights.
But in Oklahoma, as across much of rural America, gun control is seen as the work of naive and meddling minds.
"Having a gun is no different from having a hammer. It is just a tool," said Jerry Ellis, a Democratic representative in the state legislature who drafted and pushed through the law.
"Here, gun control is when you hit what you shoot at."
The passage of the law resounded like one of Larry Mullens's Winchester rifle shots through the boardrooms of America.
In recent years companies have been implementing anti-gun policies in an attempt to cut down on violence at the work place.
Now they fear the Oklahoman ruling will encourage the powerful gun lobby all over America to try to roll back the reforms.
Paul Viollis, the president of Risk Control Strategies, is appalled at the new law. Every week there are 17 murders at the work place across America, and most of them involve guns, he says.
"It's the most irresponsible piece of legislation I've seen in my 25 years in the business," he said. "I would invite anyone who'd allow people to bring firearms to work to write the first death notice.
"The argument that emp-loyees should be allowed to bring firearms to work because they'll be locked in the car is so absurd it barely merits a response."
Several companies are trying to block the law. Two days before it was due to come into force last month, a judge granted a temporary restraining order preventing it from taking effect. The next hearing is on Tuesday.
But the firms are fighting on unfavourable terrain. Contrary to the widespread impression that the nation is polarised between gun-loving Republicans and more liberal Democrats, in the heartland gun control spans party lines. The law passed unanimously in Oklahoma's Senate and by 92 votes to four in the House.
Mike Wilt, a Republican, voted against the law, not on security grounds but because he believes the state should not dictate gun policies to property owners. "Here in Oklahoma the issue of guns is not a wedge issue," he said. "We all go hunting together and we all tend to have the same beliefs."
Two weeks ago one of the principal plaintiffs, Whirlpool, a prominent supplier of white goods, withdrew from the case. It said it was satisfied that its ban on guns on its property was not affected. The gun lobby suspects that the decision had more to do with talk of a boycott of the firm.
Nowhere do feelings run more strongly than in Valliant, a small town where, on Oct 1, 2002, at the Weyerhaeuser paper mill, the row began.
Mr Mullens was one of four on-site employees who were sacked after guns were found in their vehicles in contravention of a new company ruling. They are convinced it was just an excuse to lay off workers and insist they did not know about the new security laws.
The firm, which is locked in litigation with the fired employees, rejects the charges and says everyone knew it had a zero-tolerance approach to security. "You don't need a gun to be safe at Weyerhaeuser," said Jim Keller, the firm's senior vice-president. "Safety is our number one priority.
"It's more important to tell someone they don't have a job than to have to tell a family that their loved one is not coming home from work. This is about safety; it's not about guns."
But the people of Valliant, where the high school closes down during the prime week in the deer-hunting season to allow pupils to shoot, will not be easily assuaged.
James Burrell, an assistant at the local gun shop, said: "Most people around here think the new law is already a right."
Mr Mullens has now found a new job, where his employer is less pernickety.
"People tell me to 'stick to my guns' because they are all carrying one too," he said. "The bottom line is that it is our constitutional right to have a gun in the car."
Don't bother. LG has already agreed that a company can ban bibles from their parking lots, and employ "book sniffing dogs" to ferret them out, and fire the 19 year employee who broke the company rule. Even if the policy was announced last month. Even on parking lots which are also open to non-company employee visitors.
I wish some of these "pro-property Rights" posters would spend as much time defending the Rights of individuals as the did defending the "rights" of state-sanction, quasi-gov't managed korporations.
Some folks are so myoptically (sp?) obsessed with fighting communism that any criticism of korporate America results in a negative knee-jerk reaction.
What they fail to realize is that tyranny, like any other science, advances over time. The next tyranny (one that could very likely occur right here in America) will adopt the successes of the Soviet/Nazi systems, while refining or rejecting the failures of those systems.
For example, I don't think the state will wind up owning everything, like it did in the USSR. This just isn't very efficient, and it tends to breed resentment amongst the peasants. A refinement on this system is to allow so-called "private" korporations run the economy.
This does several things. First, many of the inefficiencies of direct gov't control, no longer exist. Secondly, it's easier to deal with problems this way. Why send in a SWAT team to steal Joe Six-Pack's land for the "crime" of owning a gun, when it's so much easier just to get a quasi-gov't run kompany to fire him for "violating policy". Then Joe loses his house, and the bank/state gets his house. Last, but not least, the pay is much better for the control freaks when they sit on corporate boards, compared to a gov't job.
I think the next tyranny will be a merger between the state and big business, and it will be 10 times worse than anything we've seen before. They've had 50 years to refine the system.
Which makes it even more important for us to keep our guns, and defend our gun Rights at every opportunity.
That company can't require that all employees vote for a certain candidate for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that voting does not take place on their property...another strawman argument, you have millions it seems.
I see that you continue to edge closer and clser to your communist ideology, you even have the "K" in place of the "c" in the word company.
Will you start talking about the proletariat soon?
If no sane man would sign away his rights, then I say to you that no company is obligated to employ the insane.
I mentioned Locke, because of his idea that property rights were the basis of all our rights, I remember his notion that by mixing one's labor with the soil an individual obtained property, a fancy way of saying that if you bought it; it's yours...and by the way, I do occasionally step away from my computer; I have a life.
That's right.
If a company bans Muslims in their employment from bringing a Q'uran on to their property, will you stand in defense of those Muslim's First Amendment rights?
Or will you be defending the Company's property rights?
So now you recognize the authority of legislatures to pass laws governing what employers can not legally fire folks for? You seemed to have a real problem with the OK law on another thread.
That company can't require that all employees vote for a certain candidate for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that voting does not take place on their property...another strawman argument, you have millions it seems
They can make it a condition of employment, right? You seem to be big on that.
I see that you continue to edge closer and clser to your communist ideology, you even have the "K" in place of the "c" in the word company.
LOL! Now I'm a communist for supporting the RKBA.
And yes, I intentionally use the "k" with regards to big business, because most of them are totalitarian in nature. And they are able to get away with it in the marketplace, because the gov't subsidizes them. Welcome to korporate kommunism!
If no sane man would sign away his rights, then I say to you that no company is obligated to employ the insane.
I stand by my contention that any contract anyone signs, which states they they surrender their Rights, is null and void. Or as another famous communist, Sam Adams, put it:
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
Also, as I AM disarmed while on their property, any criminal action that could have been prevented by allowing armed employees is now soley the burden of the property owner. I so much as get a bruise from a nutcase on a rampage on their property the business owner is 100% at fault and will be held fully culpable. Period. In criminal and in civil cases.
Communist? It is YOU that is saying an individual should give up their Rights for the communal good.
The Second Amendment doesn't come at the expense of other rights.
It's a daily stuggle. The dark forces of tyranny are hellbent on disarming and de-humanizng us.
Amen. Just like watches and pocket knives. As ubiquitous as spoons and hair combs. We'd all be the better for it.
But not everyone serves, do they?
Your statement was that we are ALL bound to protect the Constitution is false, when I pointed that fact out, you posted the Oath of Citizenship as proof that we were, now you are saying that the only reason you are bound to do it is because you served in the Armed Forces, and that as a natural-born citizen, you were not required to take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution...so your statement that we are ALL bound to defend the Constitution is patently wrong.
They do not have to employ you, and they do not have to allow you on their property.
They don't even have to give you a reason why they fired you, they just have to pay their share of your unemployment.
You are all arguing squatter's rights here, your property is on THEIR property, and you were allowed access on their property pending certain regulations...if you do not meet those regulations, or violate work place rules, you are dismissed.
The only rights being attacked here, are the property rights of the business owner, whose rights to control access and use of his own property is being overturned by the Federal government in favor of the communal belief that you are entitled to property rights on someone else's property.
The SCOTUS will throw this out, and all you misguided fools will call them liberals, when in fact, the liberals here are you all.
That just so happens to be where the rubber literally meets the road.
I find it ironic and humorous that some folks here are arguing that 1) the "rights" of something created by man (a corporation) trump the Rights of the creator (man); and 2) that the state has no moral authority to regulate an entity which exists solely because of corporate charter laws that the state passed.
Of course, it ceases being humorous when you realize that many Americans have been fired by those statist HR bastards for exercising the RKBA, or murdered at the "gun-free" workplace by a lunatic.
or are put out of business by others who are willing to obey the constitution and refrain from trying to alienate, what is KNOWN to be inalienable.
Easier said than done. I suspect that many of these anti-gun kompanies are somehow getting supported by the feds. (In a truly "free market", these kompanies would have neither the time nor the resources to waste on soviet-style witch hunts.)
and the corporation, along with other businesses who routinely violate their employees' rights (allegedly in a voluntary fashion) are finding this out.
AOL tried this crap in Utah when they fired some workers for keeping weapons in their cars. They were caught by some donut-munching Nazi watching the zecurity cameras. I think they might have even been off company property (in an adjacent parking lot) when they were caught by Adolf Jr.
Anyway, the Utah legislature responded by passing a law making these kompanies legally and financially responsible if employees are harmed as a result of disarming them.
They have the right idea, since the only thing those korporate beancounters seem to understand is money and power. Hit them where it hurts.
Maybe the employer broke into someone's car and that's the topic of discussion.
The arguement regarding your house and your guest is mute, because the guest will give you the finger, vocalize that, leave and never come back. You never have the right to search his car. Your property ends at his body panels. His cars presence is all you have a say about, not it's legal contents.
The employment situation is the same, except the relationship is economic. His property ends at the body panels of his employees car. All he has a say about is the presence of the car in his lot. He can not search it and to demand it amounts to extortion. The same form of extortion to cause the loss of right(s) as an employer extorting unsafe work rules, paying in script, demanding sex ect.
This is a backdoor gun grab, because they failed to achieve it through the legislatures and are now attempting to change the rules through the courts. Employees guns locked in the car are not in the workplace and are no part of it.
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