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.
I just exercised my First Amendment right to free speech.
I thought you were in favor of defending my individual rights as defined by the Constitution?
The truth of the matter is that you, or your surviving next-of-kin, will sue your employer for failing to protect you if you had a gun locked in your car, if you had it in your briefcase next to your desk, if you had it in your desk drawer, if you had it tucked in your waist, or if you had it in your hand cocked and ready to go when the assailant entered the room.
My employer bans weapons, even locked in cars in the parking lot.
If some nut comes into my building and threatens or shoots somebody, can I sue my employer for failing to protect me?
Since they have disarmed me, isn't it their responsibility to provide security?
199 Poser
Now you're outright lying.
Show me where anyone has said anything closely resembling what you just said.
You can sue anyone for anything. You might win some and lose some. The employer does not assume strict liability for your safety. That means that you must prove negligence on the employer's part to have any chance at all of winning.
The funny things is, that the first time someone takes a gun out of his car, parked in the employee parking lot as allowed by Oklahoma law, and shoots up his work place, some lawyer will sue the employer claiming negligence because he failed to properly screen the shooter, and identify him or her as a potential danger to his co-workers.
Anything can happen in court. Juries have gone insane. At least 50% of the cases are decided on emotion instead of law.
I don't. But the property owner in question does, and...get this...THE CAR IS ON HIS PROPERTY. That means he can have the damn thing towed off if he so pleases and he can stipulate that if you want to park there you cannot have a gun. HIS PROPERTY.
He is not keeping you or me from your 2nd amendment rights. You have a choice. Don;t work there. Don't park there. Or if you do, then be prepared to take responsibility for violating his desires because he's just exercising his property rights...on his property.
Keep thinking back on the analogy regarding free speech. Do you believe an islamic mullah should have the right to call to pray on your property? He has free speech...he has freedom of movement. Why should he not be able to exercise those rights on yourt property.
The answer is...he can't do it on your property if you don't want him to. The same holds true regarding the guns.
Like I said...I am rabidly pro-gun rights and 2nd amendment. It has nothing to do with that...it has to do with simple respect for someone else's property. If the moral fiber doesn't exist to maintain that...then cash it in because freedom is gone anyway and gun ownership just mean the badest tail of the lot is going to be in charge...and be a tyrant.
Good night...hope you will think about rights in general. Where they come from (God), what they are based on (foundational moral principle), and that that all plays together. You cannot "have your way" with someone else's property, trompling their rights by compelling them to recognize your desires on their property.
Not dumb...just misguided IMHO. If he will stop and think...particularly about the free speech analogy I kleep trying to get him to consider...he'll get it.
I can't carry my means of self defense around with me on his property. Fine. I've already worked that out with my employer. I reserved the Right to sue their asses off if some nut does ignore all their fancy signs and comes in here with a gun. In return, I don't carry on THEIR property.
Depends on how fine you want to cut the line dividing their property from mine. A car is a fairly substanial piece of property, one could never be considered to be "bearing" or "carrying" their car around with them. Same for firearms. My gun can be in my car, and not techinically be on their property. However, if it was in my briefcase, then I am carrying it.
Make sense? It should. Unless you want to cede ownership of your vehicle as well as your Right to self defense in exchange for a job.
That's like saying you can park there on someone else's property and engage in whatever activity you want as long as you remain inside the car. Well, you can't if it is on someone else's property and they indicate that they do not want that activity happening on their property. The car is an extension of you...on that other person's property.
So, would it be okay to you, if you owned a parking lot, and an islamic mullah came there and, expressly against your wishes, began preaching islam to everyone paying you to park there? He has free speech rights...he is staying in his car.
Sorry, but I disagree here, despite my adament belief in and defense of the 2nd amendment.
Personally I think any business should consider the same. Liability works both ways. What's in your vehicle in the parking lot should be your personal business, not the employers. You should have the right to protect yourself on the way to and from work if that is your choice. (Laws pertaining to this should at least be as reasonable as federal interstate carry laws.) Honestly, what good is it to ban weapons from being locked inside a vehicle? The only point I can see is just another anti-gun agenda. It sure isn't going to increase work safety one bit. Physically in the work place... well IMHO your under the employer's will. It's HIS house.
No. The car does not become his. Nor does any thing inside it. Period. Why would you think just because someone invites you on to their property, that your property becomes theirs?
Expressly against my wishes? That's trespassing isn't it? Please, one topic at a time. As far as doing it from inside his car, as long as it stays WITHIN his car, why the hell should I care? No one else not inside his car as well can hear it.
The point is not whether we see the point of it or not, the point is that it is the right of the property owner to decide what to do.
Tresspasing, which is what you would be doing if I told you that you couldn't park your car on my property if there was a gun in it, and you lied and parked there anyway.
No one has said that the car becomes the property of the owner of the parking lot. That is a rediculous assertion. But its being there is by sufferage of the owner, that is clear. Anything different, and it is the person parking there that is trampling riughts, not the owner. If you do not park it there according to his wishes and dictates...he can have it towed away. In this case, as misguided as it is (and he has a right to be misguided and stupid), the property owner has made it clear he does not want guns there on that property that he owns.
In this particular case, it is a part of the employment arrangement. If the employee does not want to abide by that arrangement, he is free to work or park elsewhere.
Nothing complicated about this at all. The property belongs to someone who doesn't want guns there. That is simply their right, whether we agree with it, or think it wise or not.
Bingo. Exactly. Well said.
Liar. So just because I park my car on your property at you invitiation, it is now your property? That's commie talk.
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