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.
Almost, it declares that the government is not to violate those rights. Interactions between the rights of different individuals are matters for the governments, including the legislative and judicial branches, to sort out. But again, corporations, which are creations of governments, have no rights, only privileges, some of which parallel the rights of individuals. Corporations are granted those privileges by governments.
The problem in this situation is that the employer is effectively prohibiting you from not being armed on their property, but also while going to and from their property. Your argument would hold more water is the employer who wanted to ban arms in vehicles would be required to provide storage for those arms, presumably somewhere near the property entrance.
My employer change the wording of their "no guns" policy so that it implicitly allows for storage of guns in the private vehicles of employees. They did this by banning carry and storage in buildings and carry on ones person on company property. Unfortunately I don't work on their propery any longer, but rather on US Government property, Army property no less. The Army is particularly anal about guns on their property, even by those of soldiers, let alone a low life contractor type. Violation of their rules is not only a firing offense, it's a federal criminal one. :(
Ah ... so if you can keep a weapon concealed and the company doesn't know about it, it should be OK, even though their policy says otherwise. I guess if I trespass on someone's land and they don't catch me, that's OK too.
In the states in question, no one is stopping you from driving down the highway with a gun in your car. But you are not forced to work at a given company, nor are you forced to shop at a certain store. If you don't like the rules at a private institution, don't work there or don't shop there.
You are free to take you business elsewhere if you disagree with our system of individual rights. Mexico is popular I've heard.
Mexico has very little respect for private property rights. You'd fit right in there.
It's also a poverty-stricken craphole - for the exact same reason.
Let's say the business in question is a sole proprietorship to remove that argument from the equation.
For the love of God, that's not what I was saying at all. Are you always this combative? Do you read what people post before you freak?
What I wrote was...Of course, that's if your property in question is a business, etc.
Maybe it's me, but I don't recall EVER being invited to Wal Mart, the grocery store, or any public business at all. Yet, you say 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..
You operate a business by invite only, you're doomed.
You don't want to protect yourself, fine..don't. That is your decision. I choose otherwise and I really could care less what YOU think.
Try that passage about government not being able to take property without due process or compensation. Limiting what a property owner can do with his property is construed by many conservatives as a form of taking - such as government telling a property owner that they cannot limit the terms for use of their property.
Businesses have many rules regarding patronage. Malls don't allow distribution of leaflets, for example - a 1st Amendment activity on public property.
If a business posts a sign that they don't allow guns on the premises, don't patronize them. I would be prone to not patronize them myself and tell them why. But in the end it's their decision.
True, but I was comemnting on louie's "...come into my business uninvited...." statement. Let's stick to the facts.
If a business posts a sign that they don't allow guns on the premises, don't patronize them
And, I don't. However, those businesses are few & far between in CT.
Where does the employers rights end? Can he demand that you submit to cavity searches, strip searches, Sexual intercourse?????
I would think that your parked car would be private property and that he could not require you give you give up your rights. If they brought in a drug sniffing dog and it alerted authorities to a particular car. Would the authority to search without consent be due to law enforcement activities or the employer's property rights?
I find it hard to believe that liberal judges are willing to support the rights of terrorists to kill us but you don't support the right to self defense.
There was a state supreme court decision a couple years back that basically said that the plaintiff had the right to free speech but not the right to be a police officer. They upheld his discharge on the basis that he violated policy by expressing political views on the job.
Don't get me wrong, I thing businesses that ban concealed carry by customers or employees are stupid. But it's their property, and people are free to shop somewhere else or work somewhere else.
I don't recall language in the Bill of Rights that says certain amendments and the rights enumerated by such are superior to others. Perhaps you can point that out to me.
The particularly nasty thing about parking lot prohibitions is that they effectively prohibit subject employees from exercising their RKBA rights far beyond the parking lots in question. Two very substantial reasons for concealed carry in a vehicle are defense against car jackings and being prepared to deal with a burglar or home invader if, God forbid, you run into one on returning home from work. A few years ago, near where I live, a couple was murdered by a burglar they ran into on returning home. This fundamental personal safety reason is why an employee can be justified in violating such an asinine rule, just as he or she could reasonably violate a rule prohibiting use of the bathroom when he or she had stomach flu.
Thus, there is a powerful conflict between the employer's property right to prohibit guns on its parking lots and the employees' rights to their own personal safety. Equally important, the argument that allowing legally carried guns in employees' vehicles increases the danger of a mass workplace shooting, is bogus. In fact, as shown by the work of John Lott, the best way to prevent such shootings is to allow employees to exercise their RKBA rights to keep guns in their vehicles.
In other words, it is objectively, scientifically provable that an employer reduces its risk of workplace shootings by at least allowing employees to keep guns in their vehicles. It's not only a fundamental freedom issue, it's also a vitally serious safety issue.
Governments customarily regulate employers' workplace safety practices by, for example, fire codes and OSHA regulations. Requiring employers to respect employees' RKBA rights is far less intrusive than most present, generally accepted regulation and decisively promotes public safety and workplace safety. Those on this thread arguing for the sanctity of employer gun prohibitions are probably great supporters of far more intrusive governmental workplace regulation than merely protecting employees' rights to carry in their vehicles. Hence, a statutory requirement that employers respect employees' rights to carry in their vehicles is entirely reasonable.
Ah - so first it is enumerated in the Constitution, but now it boils down to common sense. Do you know why so many countries are poverty-stricken crapholes? Because there are no real property rights. Think twice before you disparage property rights over other rights.
Then work for someone else. No one is forcing you to work for a given employer.
He can demand anything within the law, and you can refuse to accept his workplace rules and work elsewhere.
If the employer sets unreasonable requirements, then he will not be able to secure sufficient employees to run his business, and he will be forced to either change his workplace rules, or close down.
Look at it this way.
The employer gets to set rules regarding access to his property by others, as you do with your private property; property rights are the basis of all our rights.
You have, as the employer has, a right to defend yourself, not a Constitutional right as other have argued here, but a right to self defense nevertheless, and your right to self defense is inviolate as is the employer's.
You feel that the best way to defend yourself is by carrying a loaded weapon in your car, or perhaps even on your person, and that's YOUR right.
The employer feels that the best way to defend himself is by not allowing guns anywhere on his property, and that HIS right.
Thus far it seems that your individual right to self-determination of self defense cancel one another out, so what then sets the standard?
The right to self determination in one's own property.
Theoretically, all employees are informed of every existing work place rule prior to their accepting a job; accepting a job implies that you accept the rules of the workplace right along with the wages and benefits.
Legally, the employer has further rights to change old workplace rules, or to implement new ones, as long as he makes a reasonable attempt to inform all employees of the changes.
The fact that the gun is IN your car does not make it OK to violate the property owner's rule, because the car is ON his property which violates his right to determine what he feels is his best option for self-defense.
The fact that you believe that he is wrong in that aspect doesn't really matter, because his right to self-determination as it relates to his own property trumps your opinion of his decision.
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