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.
jones:
2nd Amendment rights to carry arms in vehicles are not inferior to parking lot property rights.
jones:
Laws repugnant to Constitutional principles are null & void. - And all of us are obligated to support & defend those principles.
Constitutional principles are subjective interpretations of the actual verbiage of the Constitution.
For example...the whole separation of Church and State is a Constitutional principle, so is the principle of the three branches of government.
You will find neither actual verbiage anywhere in the Constitution, but they are recognized principles nevertheless.
Your entire argument that to bear arms extends to a degree that it negates my property rights, is not an argument grounded on Constitutional principles, as both property rights and the right to bear arms are clearly defined in the Constitution.
What the Constitution does NOT say, is that your right to bear arms negates my right to control access to my property.
Your argument can ONLY be based on the belief that you are A) entitled to a job under your own conditions, and B) entitled to set standards of use on another individual's property.
Your Second Amendment rights remain intact if you are not allowed to enter my property with a weapon, because you have NO RIGHT to enter my property unless I specifically detail the conditions of your entry and continued stay, and you have the right to decide not to enter my property and give up your Second Amendment rights.
On the other hand, your argument violates a property owner's right to set standards of access and use to what belongs to him alone.
These principles have no formal legal status but are fairly widely accepted.
You are now trying to stand on the legality of something that's subject to interpretation according to your political leanings, and has no true legal standing.
Strangely, the guy in question wasn't even on Pizza Hut property at the time of the incident. At least that's the way I read the story.
Whatever.
Attempting to discuss our Constitution with you is futile exercise in circular logic, as has been noted by others on these threads.
For instance, if you report them for violating labor laws, they would not legally be able to retaliate by firing you.
Sorry, but he has the right to set conditions for your employment. You are free to turn down the job. You are no better than liberals who tell a man what he can't do with his own property. And property is a fundamental right.
And how is that different from posting a policy regarding not allowing firearms on company property, and firing you if you violate that rule? Speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. The right to bear arms is protected by the second. But neither gives you the right to exercise them on someone else's private property against the property owner's will.
And, all you can do is ask me to leave. It's at THAT point, if I refuse, that I will then be subject to arrest for tresspassing......nothing more. Of course, that's if your property in question is a business, etc.
And if you are an employee and you violate company policy, they also don't have the right to ask you to leave? As in firing you?
Of course they do. They can fire you for just about anything.
Sorry, but no one in the USA has the 'right' to infringe on my RKBA's, -- locked in my private vehicle at work, -- as a condition of employment.
You are free to take you business elsewhere if you disagree with our system of individual rights.
Mexico is popular I've heard.
I can only save the FR one thread at a time.
I don't jump in on the 2nd amendment much. I basically follow the NRA and wonder what everyone is fussing about. We need more publicity on these situations where folks protect themselves and would probably have died if they didn't have a firearm.
See that wasn't so bad!
You have no right to enter my property uninvited at all.
If you park your car on my property, without getting my OK to do so, or if public parking is permitted as long as it doesn't violate whatever rules of access and use I've set in place for the property, I don't have to ask you to move it and wait to see what you'll do, I can have it towed without even letting you know that I'm doing it.
That remains true whether the property in question is my residence, the grounds around my residence, an empty lot I own, a business that I own and operate, or a business that I run for others.
Funny position for you to take, considering that you will not cede the point that you can take your labor elsewhere if you don't like the work rules set in place by the employer, his property rights precede gun rights, and are the base for all other rights.
These people represent the entitlement mentality that's bringing this country down.
The unspoken argument here is the idea that they are ENTITLED to the job, that they are ENTITLED to use the company parking lot, and that they are ENTITLED to violate both work place rules and the employer's property rights to keep the job they feel BELONGS to them.
They feel justified in lying to their employer about the breakage of company rules, and they claim that their right to self defense is inviolate, but they are arguing in favor of violating the employer's right to self defense because they don't like his idea of what constitutes self defense.
You hit the nail on the head...they are liberals who think that they are conservatives because they like guns.
PLEASE!!!
You haven't a clue about our Constitution.
The Oklahoma legislature violated the right to self defense.
It removed from property owners the ability to set whatever policy they believe serves in their own best interest to safeguard their well-being, and the well-being of their employees.
It doesn't matter that you don't agree with the property owner's idea that no guns on the property makes for a more safe work environment than guns on the property does, what matters is that the legislature has removed the property owner's ability to set in place a self-defense policy on their own property.
They have violated both property rights, and the right to self defense.
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