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Gun owners claim right to take their rifles to work
Telegraph ^ | 11/12/04 | Alec Russell in Valliant and Scott Heiser in Washington

Posted on 12/11/2004 6:07:04 AM PST by Mr. Mojo

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To: jonestown
I understand. It's the same thread continued from last week. Fortune 1000 companies have turned into the latest stronghold for the Left. Their work on behalf of the Evil One snakes its way through front doors, back doors, up sewage systems, where ever it can find a crawl way.

They lose the gun control fight in Congress so they go after the biggest political donors, corporate America. Once big business is under the control of the Left then they corrupt and undermine like they have for the past fifty years in academia.

Any parent with any gumption has already taken their children out of the public school system, soon you'll see folks figuring out that the same thing has happened to big business in America. The difference being is that folks have to earn a living. It's not so easy to leave a job that you can't find a quick substitute for.

Is that about it, or did I miss something?

801 posted on 12/15/2004 7:29:20 PM PST by O.C. - Old Cracker (When the cracker gets old, you wind up with Old Cracker. - O.C.)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker

Throw in liberal business support for illegal immigration and it should pretty well complete the picture


802 posted on 12/15/2004 7:31:54 PM PST by Modok
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To: Mr. Mojo

Where is the ACLU when you need em'??

John


803 posted on 12/15/2004 7:34:33 PM PST by jrfaug06
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To: spunkets
"Seems to me, that some folks are being dictated to by the trial lawyers and leftists."

You have no right to enter my property at all, I am not obligated to allow you to set one foot on my land if I don't want to, and I don't even have to give you a reason why I don't want you there.

If you ask me for permission to enter your property, I can set the conditions of access, you can either agree with them and enter my property, or disagree with them and not enter my property.

I can change my mind and demand that you leave my property at any time, for any reason whatsoever; as a matter of fact, I don't have to give you a reason at all.

If I find that you have violated any condition that I set in place for you to gain access to my property, I can immediately have you removed, by force if need be.

The parking lot is the business owner's property, and he sets the conditions of access for his property, Weyerhauser set a condition that they wanted no weapons on their property, and the employee violated those conditions KNOWINGLY.

Once they were fired, as they knew they would be, and as anyone who knowingly violates a condition of employment does, they engaged trial lawyers and set about the LEFTIST task of legally violating the property rights of others because they believe that they are ENTITLED to parking.

804 posted on 12/15/2004 7:36:02 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: Luis Gonzalez

Corporate America is no longer just a producer of goods and services. It is being used to work the back door for social change in America. That has never been the mission of big business, until now. Today, you can even find social statements being displayed with pride on the websites of Fortune 1000 companies. If that doesn't raise your hackles, then not much will.


805 posted on 12/15/2004 7:38:55 PM PST by O.C. - Old Cracker (When the cracker gets old, you wind up with Old Cracker. - O.C.)
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To: Modok

It's all in there. The homosexual agenda, illegal immigration, gun control, religious tolerance (excluding Christianity) and the list goes on.


806 posted on 12/15/2004 7:41:03 PM PST by O.C. - Old Cracker (When the cracker gets old, you wind up with Old Cracker. - O.C.)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker

You are correct again!


807 posted on 12/15/2004 7:41:43 PM PST by Modok
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To: Luis Gonzalez

See 609.


808 posted on 12/15/2004 8:03:12 PM PST by jonestown ( JONESTOWN, TX http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker
"If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments." -- Source
809 posted on 12/15/2004 8:04:37 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: jonestown

Tough Shiite jonesy.


810 posted on 12/15/2004 8:05:43 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: Luis Gonzalez

Well, please yourself. Don't listen to others, you know it all.


811 posted on 12/15/2004 8:07:09 PM PST by O.C. - Old Cracker (When the cracker gets old, you wind up with Old Cracker. - O.C.)
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To: Luis Gonzalez

Luis Gonzalez wrote:

Tough Shiite jonesy.






You gots it louie.


812 posted on 12/15/2004 8:12:18 PM PST by jonestown ( JONESTOWN, TX http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker

Is that about it, or did I miss something?

801 O.C. - Old Cracker






You're 'right on the money', in more ways than one.


813 posted on 12/15/2004 8:16:04 PM PST by jonestown ( JONESTOWN, TX http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles)
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To: Joe Hadenuf
Correct!, as an employer I know the extent of my training with a weapon, I do not know the level of training by an employee or worse yet a customer who is armed. Since having a CCW DOES NOT prove competency with a weapon I will continue to insure that only I may be armed in my place of business. The gun slingers don't like it they can go elsewhere.
814 posted on 12/15/2004 8:17:42 PM PST by BOOTSTICK (MEET ME IN KANSAS CITY)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker
Rights, Rights, and Rights

I jumped in on a discussion at TCF regarding this news item. Companies that ban guns put on defensive.

Ronald Honeycutt didn't hesitate. The Pizza Hut driver had just finished dropping off a delivery when a man holding a gun approached him.

Honeycutt wasn't about to become another robbery statistic. He grabbed the 9 mm handgun he always carries in his belt and shot the man more than 10 times, killing him.

Honeycutt faced no criminal charges, because prosecutors decided that he acted in self-defense. But the 39-year-old did lose his job: Carrying a gun violated Pizza Hut's no-weapons rule.

"It's not fair," says Honeycutt of Carmel, Ind., who has found another pizza-delivery job and continues to carry a gun. "There is a constitutional right to bear arms. If I'm going to die, I'd rather be killed defending myself."

Employers have long banned guns from the workplace as part of a violence-prevention strategy, but those policies are being tested as states pass laws making it easier for residents to carry concealed guns - in some cases, crafting legislation that strikes down employers' attempts to keep guns off company property.

What happens in these arguments is that most people wind up focusing solely on guns, with all the attendant concern about fear, violence, hostility, etc. that comes with them. In that context, both sides can point to anecdotes of either workplace violence (see "going postal") or parking lot attacks where the victim either was able or unable to defend herself late at night in a parking garage or dimly lit parking lot in a bad section of town. This is becoming more of a concern in recent years as states pass less restrictive concealed carry legislation. Two states, Oklahoma and Kentucky, have laws specifically protecting keeping guns inside a locked vehicle in workplace parking lots. (Note that Whirlpool has backed off.)

Commenter John DeWitt frames the argument when he writes,

But unlike a number of gun rights activists I believe property rights trump all.

And this is the springboard for the discussion which seems, to me, sadly lacking from the coverage of the issue. The following is a restatement and expansion of my comments at TCF.

MORE...

Indeed, John.

Your right to defend yourself, i.e. your life, is a property right. What is the most dear thing you possess? Your own self. Your own body. Your own life. Just as it is your right to prevent someone from stealing your tangible property (e.g. land, a car, etc.) it is also your right to prevent someone from taking your life from you. Do you think the the term "taking your life" as a synonym for murder is a coincidence? Rights inhere to possession. A fundamental right from possession is control over how a possesion may be used.

This issue is a really good one for understanding rights. It regrettably gets lost in the hollering from both sides, and so a really good airing of the philosophical questions doesn't happen. Instead, we get complaints such as Honeycutt's "It's not fair". How is it not fair, sir? Did someone coerce you into entering into an employment agreement?

Everybody understands that "my right to swing my fist ends where your nose starts". This is a statement of balancing rights based on burden. Is it a greater burden for me to accomodate your rights, or the other way around? Is it easier for you to deal with a broken nose, or for me to not swing my fist?

The parking lot question is a little more difficult, because there's an economic burden in having difficulty finding a job with an accomodating employer. The burden a company would bear in accomodating gun-carrying employees (or customers for that matter) is more difficult to define, but it includes such things as a risk of violence, and all the liabilities which could come from that. Note that some gun-rights advocates are arguing for a law which makes a company liable for damages resulting from an inability to defend one's self, if a company has a no-guns policy.

But the person who is entering the property carrying a gun is the active party, and thus I think that from a philosophical point of view, it's less burdensome for that person to cease the activity than it is for the passive party (in this case the company owning the property) to accede.

Let's assume that the state steps in and passes a law which states that business owners may not prohibit carrying of weapons onto their property. The businesses' property rights have been diluted with no recourse other than the courts for restoration of their rights (in the eyes of the law #&151; I stipulate that the law may never actually take away a right, so there's no need to argue the point). This is a significant burden upon the right to control the use of their own property.

By contrast, the burden on the individual for restoring full exercise of his right to self preservation (via carrying a gun) is to simply leave the property, or not enter in the first place. This is really the same as saying that his rights have never been diluted in the first place, since it is a personal choice to enter such a property (where the owner states guns may not be carried). There is no coercion on the part of the state, or either party, in what is, in effect, a contract between two parties, the terms of which specify under what conditions a person may enter the property. By the act of entering the property, the individual implicitly consents to the terms of the property owner. If you don't consent, don't enter, or leave when you are informed of the terms.

So there are really two rights at work here. Right in property, and right of self-defense. By passing a law restricting businesses' ability to make policy, the state infringes on both.

So in the end, I wind up not liking it when I see gun-rights advocates arguing in favor of infringing on other rights. For when you argue that under some set of circumstances, the state may burden a particular right, you put the others in jeapordy of similar reasoning.

Source

815 posted on 12/15/2004 8:18:55 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: THEUPMAN

Your comments make it clear why responsable gun owners and carriers, like myself must suffer the mindless rantings of fools such as yourself! Your God given rights to be armed does not extend to my property!


816 posted on 12/15/2004 8:23:01 PM PST by BOOTSTICK (MEET ME IN KANSAS CITY)
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To: BOOTSTICK
I will continue to insure that only I may be armed in my place of business

And how do you continue to insure that regarding customers and employees?

817 posted on 12/15/2004 8:23:16 PM PST by Joe Hadenuf (No more illegal alien sympathizers from Texas. America has one to many.)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker
"So there are really two rights at work here. Right in property, and right of self-defense. By passing a law restricting businesses' ability to make policy, the state infringes on both. "

Go ahead O.C...call this guy a socialist and a gun grabber.

818 posted on 12/15/2004 8:23:36 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker

I don't know it all, but I know what's right in this case.


819 posted on 12/15/2004 8:24:53 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
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To: Joe Hadenuf

Metal detectors!, and signs posted saying "NO WEAPONS ALLOWED"


820 posted on 12/15/2004 8:27:23 PM PST by BOOTSTICK (MEET ME IN KANSAS CITY)
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