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.
How about uniforms? I can wear my street cloths, obnoxious t-shirt and all, to my place of work. Change in to more appropiate clothing for conducting your business, and what can you do about it? Not a damn thing.
Just don't invite me on your property and expect to get away with doing a body cavity search on me. I'm not your slave and my property is not yours. I'm coming to work for you as a mutual argeement, not a slave/owner one.
Just because your political and judicial hero's are working to screw up our Rights, doesn't mean you are anywhere near being in the right on these issues.
Manatee Memorial Hosptial, in Bradenton, Florida has signs posted "No smoking in private vehicles, while in the hospital parking lot"...and it's perfectly legal!!!!!!
Great harm? Moron. It was the Founders of this country who said it was a good thing that "every man be at all times armed". So much so they made it a specificly protected RIGHT. You are on the EXACT OPPOSITE side of that.
With friends like you, who needs the Brady Campaign?
Well, I am going to hit the hay now. One last thing, I just can't let stand your last comments to Luis. I know Luis...what I said of him and his patriotism is true.
It's apparnet that this more and more about your dislike for and attempts at a pissing contest with someone I happen to know. As a result, the only horse hockey smell here is coming off of you right now and I really wish you'd back off a bit, cool down, and realize it...then just wash it off.
Based on what I have seen here, I have my doubts that you will do so...and it's no sweat off my brow either way, but I really do wish you would prove me wrong.
That's your call and I am now off to cutting Z'z.
No. Moron. It has been ruled "legal" by judicial activists. Anyone with an ounce of sense would say that as long as your smoke doesn't leave your car you are well within your Rights to kill yourself slowly within the confines of your own property.
I do not agree with such a decision in general, but that property owner has the right to make it.
Why? If you don't agree, -- why then is that ability to control employees so important?
I don't. But the property owner in question does, and...get this...THE CAR IS ON HIS PROPERTY.
Get this. The car, & the gun it are my property, -- parked on his property so that I can work at his job.
It is not his 'job' to deny me the right to carry arms to & from work.
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.
Again, -- why is his ability to disarm employees so important? Why does his property right trump my RKBA's?
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.
'Just' exercising his property rights disarms his employees. This is just not the way we operate in America.
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.
No, -- equating the right to be armed while going to and from work has no analogy to preaching on the job.
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.
As I see it, the employer needs to respect his employees RKBA's.
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.
I think about them in specifics. Specifically when employers try to use one right to infringe on another.
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.
Nor can they have their way with my rights.
Your worse than Brady, you want to limit property rights, nice try though COMRADE!
Luis has proved over several threads to be no fan of Second Amendment Rights. If he's a patriot, then I'm a small mouthed bass. I couldn't care if he's your brother in law.
Wrong is wrong. My property, your property. Why are you guys having so much trouble understanding something I can easily explain to a three year old?
Still can't f*cking grasp that can you?
If he is okay with that, then no problem. But if he has established his own rules regarding the same, then there is a problem when you violate those rules. You still have your property rights...you can just exercise them OFF his property. Otherwise, you are then in tresspass, with your car, on his property, the moment you violate the stipulations he places on you parking your car, with all that is in it, on his property.
We're not talking to three year olds here, we're talking as adults. You're property is taking up space on his property...infringing it. If you don't like the rule sof his property space...move it. Plain and simple.
And Jonestown, I saw your post from E.T. Benson. That is an excellent essay.
I knew him personally. He would take great exception to your side of this discussion. He was an avid supporter of property rights, as well as the second amendment. I take a good deal of my own position from him and his teachings. He would be very forthright in his position that a property owner had the right to stipulate what went on on his proerty and had the right to evict anyone who willingly violated those rules and thus proved himself disrespectful of the basic moral respect for the property rights of others.
This does not mean that people must be disarmed, or that the RKBA is injured. It just means in a free society that you have a choice to make. Either respect the other's wishes and go elsewhere, or violate those wishes and be willing to take responsibility when you do...like being fired, or being towed away.
Again...and finally (because my eyelids are down around my shoes at this point), Good night.
My car was invited on to his property. The contents are completely beside the point and none of my employers business.
I feel like I'm trying to explain this to three year olds. Their property. My property. It really is as simple as that. He doesn't want my guns on his property? Fine, they never will be. They'll be in my car on MY property.
Come on Jeff. I've respected your thoughts in the past. Don't make me lose respect for you now. My property Rights are every bit as strong as anyone elses, employer or no.
Some of these corporate property rights absolutists admit openly that companies could ban Bibles kept in locked trunks of employees cars on their parking lots. Or Korans, or Playboys, or National Reviews.
The danger here is that in the future, society could evolve to more and more privatization, to the point that very little outside of your front door would not be some corporation or another's "private property." We have in the past seen entire "company towns" and may again in the future.
I don't want a tyranny to be able to use the dodge that your weapons, Bibles etc are banned from "private property," when most of the country becomes "private property."
This is no fit way for a free society of inividuals to interact with each other.
Their property. My property. And never should one have control over the other.
Your parking there is not an invite, it is a part of your condition for work, or due to whatever agreement you have between you. If one stipulation of that agreement is no guns...which I personally do not agree with...then that is his right. It is not a matter of whether I agree with it, or think it is stupid or not...it is a matter of respecting that person's freedom to do with his property as he sees fit...on his property. You have a choice, park there on his property according to his rules...or park somewhere else.
Your property is still yours...to do with as you please as long as you do not infringe with it on someone else's property. Your property may start where the rubber meets the tarmac...but when the tarmac it is parked on BELONGS to someone else, you are there by their sufferance and according to their rules. If you do not like the rules...roll the rubber tires somewhere where the rules are to your liking...or onto your own property where you set the rules.
This is circular now. We are covering the same ground and I am getting sleepier by the moment. I hope you understand that my point it that we have to respect others property rights just as much as we respect our own, or our RKBA. A business owner, a home owner, a parking lot owner, a rancher...all of them can stipulate the rules for your stay on their property. We ignore or walk on that at the same peril we would if we allow the government to deprive us of our RKBA in public or on our own premises.
But we cannot enforce our rules on the others either, or we become what we fear.
I trust that society will retain its moral compass to enough degree to prevent what you have spoken of Travis. If not, then we have lost it anyway and will be fighting to restore it.
We just cannot do it by trying to dictate to, or compell a property owner as to what rules must exist on their property. That's a power I am not willing to grant anyone...individual or government. we ahve already come dangerously close to granting government that pwoer...and it leads to fascism.
You've got some odd notions of what property Rights entail. Either that car, and its private contents, are mine. Or they are not. They can't be both. It's illogical.
I can't pull my guns FROM my property while still on his land without risking my job. Most certainly. But while my property is on my mobile property, its mine. Period. End of story. In order to set conditions upon the contents would be to extert a level of control over my property that would be tantamount to negating my property Rights.
How does my storage of a fireamr, completely enclosed by MY property, infringe his property Rights in any way, shape, or form?
I'm not "carrying" on his property. It is stored within MY property.
Go to sleep. I'm about out of gas as it is.
Best regards....
That's what this is about. Whatever the reason...the owner actively indicated he didn't want it there...either you respect thos wishes (and his right) or you do not.
I know we are 99% in agreement on most iossues DC. I know if there was something you absolutely did not want happening on your proerty, you would be up in arms if someone drove onto your property and engaged in what you expressly said no to. It's the principle that is critical here. Either it applies or it does not. I believe it is a natural law...and it applies and cut both ways...even when we do not agree with it.
Good night (again).
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