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.
You're correct, permission must be granted. However, you'd be surprised at how many people unknowingly give that permission when they sign for their parking stickers. It pays to read agreements.
An employer has a right to make any rules he wants on his property. A citizen has every right to work where he wants to if the employer will hire him and if he follows the employer's rules. That said, it is foolish for the employer to make no-gun rules. That postal fellow is not going to observe the no-gun rule when he brings his piece to the shop and he is more likely to think of doing it if he things no one else at the shop will be armed.
What are you talking about? A sign in a business's window stating "no guns allowed", or the same statment in an employees handbook IS NOT A LAW, Ace. You might want to know what a law IS before you carry.I have been carrying for YEARS and know the laws in my state. It is my responsibility to do so.
That's it, all of it.
My right to free speech does not trump your right to evict me from your home if I am saying there things of which you do not approve.
What does that have to do with any of this? Did you even read the previous posts? I have no idea what you're referring to.
It is the same as the employer's right to ban guns on his property.Your right to carry does not trump his right to ban your gun on his property.
Unfortunately, everyone has a right to do stupid things.
Louie, I have been arguing against companies violating employees property rights to guns, - [guns in the hands of the good guys] for a week now!
And who are the bad guys this time? The guys who used government to violate the property rights of land owners.
The bad guys are companies misusing their property rights in order to violate employee rights.
Your rights were intact, no one violated your rights;
Not true. The employees right to carry arms in their cars was violated by the 'new rules'.
you have the right not to work for a company whose regulations you do not believe in, you have the right to park elsewhere, you have the right to boycott the products made, and you have the right to carry a weapon up to the edge of their property...but that wasn't enough for you, you want the right to dictate how a landowner may use his land.
Use? - He is using his power to violate his employees right to be armed to & from work.
The only rights being violated are the rights of the property owner.
How does it violate a companies 'rights' for employees to park locked vehicles [containing guns] on the lots they provide?
One day, your neighbors will get together and decide that you may not put up a nativity scene in your front yard, and they will do so claiming the same "right" that you now claim. The right to dictate to others what they may or may not do on their property.
I'm not claiming a right to dictate anything. The company is dictating to their employees about their RKBA's.
Jeff Head is a national figure in the fight to safeguard our Second Amendment rights, and he patiently tried explaining to you just how wrong you were, as did many people on this thread, unfortunately, you are the enemy in the fight to safeguard our freedoms...you are that well-intentioned paver of the road to hell.
Many people on this thread are misguided. I am patiently trying to explain why. -- Companies are cynically misusing personal property rights to infringe on their employees 2nd amendment rights.
You've been arguing in favor of violating the property rights of property owners (employers) so that employees do not have to be inconvenienced into making alternative parking arrangements.
You are actually to dense to understand this argument.
DOJ Memo: 2nd Amendment is Individual Right
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1305791/posts
Joe Waldron, executive of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), told Cybercast News Service that the memorandum is "a good start, a good first step.
"What this does," Waldron explained, "is it puts the federal government -- the U.S. Justice Department -- which is the nation's chief law enforcement agency, on record as recognizing that the Second Amendment, without question, is intended to apply to individuals and not to collective organizations --- snip --
The Justice Department went on to say; --
"A 'right of the people' is ordinarily and most naturally a right of individuals, not of a State and not merely of those serving the State as militiamen.
The phrase 'keep arms' at the time of the Founding usually indicated the private ownership and retention of arms by individuals as individuals,--- "
Neither statement applies to the debate at hand. An individual's right to keep and bear arms is not the issue, the property owner's right to his property is what's being discussed.
I've posted the thoughts of two individual pro-Second Amendment advocates addressing this specific point, you, as it is the norm with you, can't substantiate anything with a thing beyond your own misguided opinions.
Luis Gonzalez wrote: You've been arguing in favor of violating the property rights of property owners (employers) so that employees do not have to be inconvenienced into making alternative parking arrangements.
Bottom line jonesy, and my last post to you on this.
Let's say that I believe that my safety, the safety of my loved ones, as well as the safety of anyone in my house is best served by an absence of guns on my property.
You believe that I am wrong.
You however, also believe that if I invite you to dinner, you have the right to ignore the policy I set for my property because you find parking on the curb and off my property inconvenient, and that you will use the government to force me to accept YOUR car entering MY property so that you can eat MY dinner.
You CAN use government to force your ideas on me, and to violate my rights...but it makes neither you or the government right.
You are wrong, and reasonable people have tried to show you why.
Bye.
The article:
"So there are really two rights at work here. Right in property, and right of self-defense."
____________________________________
One of the most concise arguments on the current debate in Oklahoma over the right of employer to set policy regarding weapons on their property that I have found on the web.
#1 Luis
____________________________________
Luis Gonzalez wrote:
An individual's right to keep and bear arms is not the issue, the property owner's right to his property is what's being discussed.
I agree with you, Pup. In my company's employee handbook, it says that "employees are not to provoke perpetrators in any way." This applies for situations both in and outside of the office during work hours. Essentially, we're not allowed to carry on company time. Now geographically, we're located to several relatively high crime areas and do work in all of them. The disagreement I have with the company is that no one in the Wendy's mass murder several years ago provoked the perp and they still were all put in the freezer and shot in the back of the head. I'll be damned if that happens to me.
No, I do not believe; --
-- "that if I invite you to dinner, you have the right to ignore the policy I set for my property because you find parking on the curb and off my property inconvenient, and that you will use the government to force me to accept YOUR car entering MY property so that you can eat MY dinner."
-- I have never posted anything on this thread to that effect.
Bye bye.
Globalism, Neo-Tribalism And False Reality
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1304383/posts
" --- Globalism is merely the latest version of these reactionary movements, this time striving to create one big global tribe, or global village, an attempt to recreate paleolithic tribal society on a global scale.
What about the so-called big brave capitalists? How does big business fit into this picture?
Martin Page, in his book The Company Savage (1972) drew the parallel between the modern corporation and the tribe, which he defined as a group of people who superstitiously believe that, together, they add up to more than the sum of their individual beings.
From this superstition springs another notion found in almost all tribal societies: that the tribe itself is a living force in its own right, which exists independently of the people who make it up.
In Africa, says Page, tribesmen call this force the Tribal Spirit, in Britain it is called the Company Spirit.
This pagan belief is even recognised in corporate law as the fictional persona, the corporate personality. It is also the basis of the idea of the organic corporate state.
Antony Jay, author of the book, Corporation Man (1972), also recognised the similarity between the tribe and the modern corporation and even sought to apply the dynamics of tribal behavior to corporations in a bid to have them function more effectively. Professor Hayek also attributed the recent revival in tribalist thinking to the fact that more and more people were obliged to work in larger and larger organisations, both public and private.
Globalists are socialists and therefore collectivists, in other words, tribalists. They view society not as many individuals, but as various tribes, pressure groups, or human resources whose interests are necessarily in conflict. They readily accept concepts such as inherited tribal guilt, guilt for past wrongs allegedly committed by people of the same tribe or race.
It is therefore meaningful for them to apologise for the alleged crimes of their tribal ancestors, and to try to persuade others to do likewise.
They are obsessed with issues of race, culture and group rights, while they ignore and set about abolishing individual rights."
_________________________________
As we see on this thread, -- the "Company Spirit" is set on abolishing individual rights.
Well before you get all upset, that sign IS THE LAW in Texas. Penal Codes Section 30.05 (criminal trespass) and 30.06 (Trespass By Holder of License to Carry Concealed Handgun) are automatically invoked should you carry a gun onto a premisis that:
1) Displays the 30.06 sign
2) Displays other signage barring firearms
3) You have signed an agreement stating you will not bring a firearm onto the property
4) Enter into a verbal agreement that would preclude you carrying a firearm on the property.
Finally, you've commited criminal trespass if you recieve notice that remaining on the property with a concealed weapon is forbidden and you fail to depart.
I've been carrying for a long time as well, and I know the laws in Texas inside and out. I'm suspicious that your state allows you to carry on private property without the owner's consent. Hell, I just flat out think you're wrong.
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