Posted on 02/08/2006 7:13:35 AM PST by neverdem
TALLAHASSEE
A bill being pushed by the NRA to allow people to keep guns in their cars on workplace parking lots faces a tough challenge from the powerful Florida Chamber of Commerce.
TALLAHASSEE - The National Rifle Association is pushing a bill that would penalize Florida employers with prison time and lawsuits if they prohibit people from keeping guns in their cars at workplace parking lots.
But the proposal is facing stiff opposition from a group just as powerful in the state capital as the NRA: Florida's biggest business lobby.
Mark Wilson, a vice president of Florida's Chamber of Commerce, which represents 136,000 businesses, said the proposal, to be voted on today in a House committee, is ''an all-out assault'' on employer-employee relations that intrudes on private property rights.
With other business groups expected to join in, the widespread opposition to the NRA bill sets the stage for a rare power struggle between two of the Legislature's mightiest lobbies. And some political observers predict that, for one of the first times in recent history, the NRA will lose in the Legislature of a state where one of every 49 people has a concealed weapons permit and an estimated six million own firearms.
Bill sponsor Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican, said he filed the legislation to prevent ''back-door gun control.'' In the past two years, he has successfully sponsored bills limiting lawsuits against gun ranges, preventing cops from compiling electronic lists of gun owners and expanding people's rights to use deadly force if they feel threatened outside their homes.
''We just disagree that the business community's private property rights trumps my Second Amendment rights,'' Baxley said, noting he doesn't personally support carrying firearms in the workplace.
Under the bill, if business owners ban guns in cars on workplace parking lots, they could get sued and charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. The bill has an exception for places like schools, where guns are banned by law.
Gov. Jeb Bush, who noted he helped reshape the controversial gun-range bill, said he's uncommitted right now and wants to ``let things develop a little bit.''
The measure was inspired by a case out of Oklahoma in 2002, when a dozen paper mill workers were fired after bosses found out they had guns in their cars. Oklahoma lawmakers passed a law similar to the Florida proposal, and business owners sued in federal court. Among them: ConocoPhillips. The NRA then launched a boycott, replete with billboards saying, ''ConocoPhillips is no friend of the Second Amendment.'' Since then, four states have passed laws like Oklahoma's, seven are considering them, and five killed the idea with relatively little debate, said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
He said the Florida legislation is faring badly because it tells big business what to do.
''I don't know what the NRA is smoking,'' Hamm said. ``They're taking on the business lobby, which is just foolish.''
Wilson, the Florida chamber executive, said employers have the right to regulate what happens on their property ``just like we have dress codes, just like we have all kinds of things. As soon as we allow a national organization to decide employment terms between an employee and an employer, we've gone too far.''
Wilson added that ``this seems to be a collision between the Second Amendment rights and property rights of homeowners and businesses.''
But the NRA's Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, said the federal and state constitutions don't expressly recognize employer rights to regulate behavior.
''The Constitution gives you the right to bear arms,'' she said. ``It doesn't say you have a right to come to work nude or come to work wearing a bathing suit, or how long your hair can be or whether you have facial hair or whether you come to work smelling because you haven't taken a bath.''
Hammer said she's not worried about taking on the chamber of commerce: ``The chamber represents self-interests. NRA represents the people. I fear nothing, except losing freedom and losing rights.''
Miami Herald staff writer Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report. mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
You're not the steward of your own basic rights?
How incredibly dense of you to believe that.
Apparently?
No doubt about it. Luis says:
"-- The Second Amendment is a constraint on government, not an imposition on the individual. --"
"-- I, on the other hand, as a private citizen, am not bound by the Constitution. --"
He thinks he is not bound by the Law of the Land.
What more need be said? You cannot reason with a denial of our Constitution.
How strange you cite Williams on smoking rights, but ignore him on our individual rights herein:
Bogus rights
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1574226/posts
Walter Williams wrote:
"--- we have to decide what is a right.
The way our Constitution's framers used the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people and imposes no obligation on another.
For example, the right to free speech, or freedom to travel, is something we all simultaneously possess. My right to free speech or freedom to travel imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference.
In other words, my exercising my right to speech or travel requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights. --"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other words, my right to carry a gun in my car imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference; -- it requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights.
Thus, you have no natural right to insist that I have no gun in my car; -- nor do our governments have the power to help you prohibit guns from your parking lot
You've conceded the gun argument at this point I see.
Now, let's move on to what we're not arguing about...
What you (and the NRA) are doing is the start of the slippery slope which can lead to Korans and Bibles being banned form the workplace.
You are advocating the will of the majority imposed on the minority via the use of legislation (force of government).
Corporations may someday be forced to fire people bringing Korans and Bibles into the workplace because the weight of popular opinion, backed by the force of government, and financed by special interest groups forced legislation into existence which decreed both inflammatory or even hate speech.
You have already laid the base for the argument when you insinuated that government financial interest in American industry that prohibited guns in the workplace was a possible violation of the Second Amendment by the government vis a vis their involvement in the enterprise.
By your same argument, allowing people to bring Bibles and Korans into a workplace were Federal (or State) monies are being spent violates (according to a large number of Americans) the Establishment clause of the Constitution.
Keep demanding more government and less individual rights...they will be only too happy to oblige.
I posted exactly what Walter Williams thinks about property rights,
Go on and keep your head safely tucked in the sand.
Walter Williams believes that property rights is the bulwark of all other rights.
"Private property rights are the bulwark for liberty, and should be jealously guarded and not be sacrificed for the sake of expediency." -- Walter Williams
"Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of G-d, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." -- John Adams
The question though is: Do you have the right to park in the parking lot, and the answer is no. If an employer makes a parking rule you don't like, which is his right to do so, then you just park elsewhere or quit. There are lots of cases this has applied to that have nothing to do with firearms. Some employers have limited what makes of vehicles are allowed into the company parking lot. Private property is private property.
That's fine, but what right do you have to park your house anyplace other than where it belongs? I absolutely believe in your right to have in your vehicle anything that's legal, but you don't have the right to drive or park that vehicle on any stretch of private property without the express consent of the owner, and the owner can set whatever terms he wants in return for his consent. Don't like it, don't drive or park your vehicle on his property.
And you make erroneous and negative assumptions about my intentions, which also reduces the validity of your whole stance on this issue. You will note that I have not resorted to such insinuations, and from reading your essays, I rather expected better.
You have no constitutional right to enter private property. Entrance to private property is solely through an agreement between you and the property owner.
"The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty." - Arthur Lee
I've known and conversed with each of you many times over the years. I'd say we all agree on about 95+% of issues, and are very well and friendly disposed towards one another...including our views of the unalienable right to defend ones self and therefore to be bear arms.
However, if I let each of you know, straight up, before hand, that when coming to my house for dinner I didn't want you to bring a loaded gun into my house, I believe each of you would honor that request...or, you would politiely tell me that you weren't coming.
If I extended that to a get together, or work activity out in my barn...I believe each of you would still honor that request, or politely tell me you preferred not to come.
I am not saying I would ask you that...but I know that if I did, you would honor my right to be, in essence, the King, of my own home and property.
Now, if you came armed anyway, if I had asked you not to bring firearms and saw you with one, why then I would politely ask you to either take the firearm somewhere off my property, or ask you to leave. On the other hand, if, in the unlikely event, someone accosted you and/or me while we were there, why then I would be glad you had it and we could use both your firearm and mine to defend ourselves. At that point, I would not make an issue of you having had it.
Without that happening, if you chose to bring it, then you would also have to be responsible for that act and my potentially asking you, as the property owner to either take it away, or leave.
Note...in none of this have I violated your right to bear amrs. I have asked ou as the owner of the property in question to not bring them...you are still free to choose either not to come, to come without them, or, as I have said, to bring them anyway and then be responsible for that decision.
I believe this covers the bases...the same principle must apply to someone's property, whether in their building or on the premises. Otherwise, property rights become meaningless. Our founders fought against the government forcing them to house armed men on their property..the kings redcoats. To compel me, with the force of government, to accept onto my property aremd indivduals against my will (outside of a time of insurrection or war), is to, in essence, do the same thing as the King did with his redcoatsd IMHO, and I would be against it.
That's my take and opinion on the matter.
"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" -- Matthew 20:15
Thanks Jeff.
I can't speak for those who lived in quarters, but weapons were never allowed in baracks or on ship in any place I was ever stationed.
On the totally pragmatic side of things, I must point out that the very important word in the phrase "concealed carry", namely, "concealed". I'm sure that a level of civil disobedience goes on with these sort of restrictions, along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell". A store says "no guns", you carry in there anyway, make your purchases and leave with no one the wiser. It's not something your average person, inside the store or out, is going to be dwelling about.
And as I've said earlier on this thread, you can always spend your money somewhere else.
See my post 174. Thoughts?
The sticky wicket that seems to have some tempers flaring is when you have to go somewhere, no option not to, and they don't want you carrying, or even leaving the firearm in the car. This means you don't carry it at all for the entire trip, unless you can find alternate parking, or a place to store it, etc., etc.
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