Gun owners claim right to take their rifles to work

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.

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."

"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."

"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.

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

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