Posted on 12/16/2004 6:17:56 AM PST by Luis Gonzalez
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.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.)
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.
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.
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.
When my boss(the owner of a small motorcycle accessory and service store)had me sign a paper wherein I acknowledged that if I were to be caught with firearms or ammunition for firearms I would be subject to immediate dismissal, I signed it in front of him while telling him that I would not be letting the "rules" of some wimpy liberal get me killed.
He has many times since seen firearms and ammunition in my possession at his place of business, and I still work there. Might have something to do with the fact that I could get a job in any other shop today. I feel sorry for people that work for large companies with guard gates and moronic policies against personal protection.
An employer's "right to prohibit guns in his parking lot" is an extension of THEIR right of self-defense, you may not agree with their notion that no guns provides for a safer environment, but you don't get to violate his personal right to set the course for what he believes is the best way to achieve personal safety on his own property, anymore than he gets to tell you that YOU can't have guns in your own house.
By the way, don't post that ridiculous argument about your car being your property, it's parked on HIS property, which means that you have transported a gun on to his property against his wishes.
Who is forced to work for any employer in the U.S.?
Post #122 was intended for you as well
He made a choice, it's his property, and it is his choice to make.
He can however, fire you at will now, and is released of liability should your gun be used to perpetrate a criminal act on his property because he has proof that you violated a work place rule by making the gun available to whomever used it.
The point is that employer is, in indulging its bigotry, jeopardizing my safety and the public safety in general. By attempting to create a so-called "gun free" zone in its parking lot it is actually creating a criminal's playground in that parking lot with the attendant risk of increased rapes, robberies, and murders. Every state that's adopted shall issue CCW has seen a substantial decline in violent crime, and undeniable fact. When an irresponsible employer recklessly indulges its bigotry against guns, it's doing something tantamount to blocking fire exits.
Garbage. What if the employer's parking space is the only one available. Also, it's incredibly hard to see why any employer should be allowed to indulge its irrational, backward anti-gun bigotry by jeopardizing the individual safety of its employees and the safety of the public which uses its parking lot by turning the lot into a criminal's playground.
Article [IV.]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Article [V.]
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Many people construe the personal income tax (nth amendment) to be illegal, but the courts do not agree. Believing something does not make it so.
Article V of the Constitution has 2 clauses regarding property rights...
Article IV on the other hand, specifically prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
This has been upheld on numerous occasions, but I have not been able to find one citation giving any property owner the right to violate that.
I certainly may have missed one somewhere and would appreciate any cases that you can provide me with where the SCOTUS has ruled otherwise.
Thanks
See the well made points at #96.
Ones that unreasoning opponents will be sure to ignore.
Garbage. What if the employer's parking space is the only one available. Also, it's incredibly hard to see why any employer should be allowed to indulge its irrational, backward anti-gun bigotry by jeopardizing the individual safety of its employees and the safety of the public which uses its parking lot by turning the lot into a criminal's playground.
127 libstripper
There also are concepts of freedom of association and contracts. Freedom of association allows a business to decide who it will do business with - and that can preclude gun owners. Contracts allow terms of employment. You are correct that a business does not have a right to force a search of your car. However, if they suspect you have a weapon in your car and you refuse a search, they have a right to terminate you if that is part of the employment contract.
At the end of the day, if the government forces a business to admit gun owners or employ gun owners, it would be the same as forcing the Boy Scouts to admit gays or forcing property owners to allow the public access to their property against their will. Gun rights do not trump all other rights - they should be relatively unlimited in the public arena - but private property carries its own rights.
I've protested many times for gun rights, bucko. Apparently to you, because someone disagrees with your reading on this specific topic, they are therefore subject to insults and "bigot" bullcrap, the way Jesse Jag slimes those who disagree with him as bigots.
Nice company you keep - and GREAT tactics for persuading those who disagree with you.
My point in post #122, is that a gun owner setting a no-guns on property workplace rule AMOUNTS TO THE PROPERTY OWNER EXERCISING HIS RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE!
His right to make that choice is driven by the fact that he is legally, financially, and maybe even criminally responsible/accountable for the well-being and the actions of the people on his property.
The fact that others may not think that this is the best policy to achieve personal safety for the people he has allowed on his property, is made irrelevant by the very same argument advanced by those who claim that they have a personal right to make a free choice regarding their ability to defend themselves.
Well, so do the employers, and the fact that you do not agree with their choice does not give anyone the right to violate both his right to self defense AND his property rights.
The State of Oklahoma removed an employer's right to set a policy on their own property, yet they did not relieve him of liability for whatever may happen as a result of the presence of guns on the property.
Highly, highly hypocritical.
You do not have a right to violate an employer's right to self defense.
The point is, are you forced to work there by the government? No. But you would have the government force the employer to hire you on terms counter to their policy. You are the one looking to government to resort to force of law here, to make a private entity do something against its own wishes.
And please drop the "bigot" routine - that is best left to liberals, not conservatives.
Your other arguments about safety concerns are more interesting, along the lines that government already regulates workplace safety. However, I think a lot of government regulation is overreaching - so the question is, do you want to resort to a control tool used by big-government liberals to promote your own agenda? Does that create a tacit endorsement of such usurpation of power by government?
dirtboy wrote:
I've protested many times for gun rights, bucko.
Do you ever get out and hit the streets for gun rights? Get letters published in papers to counter anti-gun editorials? Write your congresscritters?
Nah, because I disagree with you on this one specific issue, because other fundamental rights are in play, I'm an anti-gun bigot.
Building code is building code, this is not setting building code, this involves the employer's right of self defense.
If you argue that your right to self defense in inviolate, then you are also arguing that his right to self defense is inviolate.
Then, your argument is reduced to whether your opinion has more merit than his, and at that point the clear winner is the property owner/employer as a result of his property rights, and his legal, financial, and criminal accountability for anything that may happen to anyone on his property.
We must be on different threads. I am talking Constitution and you are talking concepts and contracts.
You, yourself state that they have a right to terminate you if that is part of the employment contract.
True, but only if that is part of the employment contract.
I never mentioned gun rights. I brought up the issue of the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure.
Oh, BTW the government already allows public access to private property against the owner's will. Easement must be provided when another property owner cannot reach his property in any other reasonable way. Public access to public beaches over private property is not only required, but must be provided at the expense of the property owner in most cases.
Just what Constitutional or other rights does private property carry?
(no empty rhetoric please...facts only)
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