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
Do you think the government is infringing upon your property Rights by saying you can't build a Russian airbase on it?
Isn't it your property, and shouldn't you be able to contract with whomever you choose?
I oppose this legislation as a violation of property rights and the freedom to make contracts, but if they pass it, they'd better include a provision protecting the employer if an employee harms someone with a gun while on the job.
You just made the argument that the government can tell me what I must use my property for, and that I can't set rules for entry, because your right to park supersedes my right to my property.
Not true. You've been told that we the people have a right to keep arms in vehicles, and you can't infringe on our right.
When the government violates the rights of industry owners in the name of the worker, we have socialism.
When the government allows industry owners to violate the gun rights of employees in the guise of 'safety', we'll have socialism.
Of course we all agree that no right is absolute. There are cases of conflicting rights and also situations of health and safety.
I agree with such laws which forbid open sewage, or conditons which cause rat or mosquito infestations, etc.
I think an employer who seeks to ban guns in vehicles on his property is simply wrong, even to the extent of being evil.
What I have in my car unless it is something which is an immediate threat to him such as a bomb or container of anthrax is none of his business: period.
It is the exact same thing as saying you may not bring a car onto his parking lot which contains emergency gear.
His parking lot is his property but it is not private. If it is accessable to the general public, he has no right to make unreasonable demands on those who enter.
The inside of my car is private. I have no idea how the courts view it but inside my car should be considered just like inside my house.
I'm not infringing on your right to carry, you can keep your guns in your vehicle, but you can't park your vehicle with guns in my parking lot. You wish to park your vehicle in my property, against my wishes, and thus you seek to violate MY rights, and you want ti use government to facilitate the violation of my individual property rights.
You are creating some absurd Constitutional right to convenient parking.
It doesn't exist.
It's the same argument that liberals use to promote the right to kill the unborn, a non-existent right (to park conveniently/privacy) used to violate an unalienable right (to property/life).
The second amendment does not say anything about your parking lot, your private property, or federal property for that matter.
The right to own weapons is the right to be free.
If you don't like free men on your property, you have a perfect right to refuse admission to them.
That would include all citizens of the USA.
Perhaps that would cut down on your business, having no employees, no customers.
My right to life does not end at the borders of your business. My right to keep and bear arms is just as absolute.
So sorry, but that is the way it is.
The inside of the vehicle was considered private until recently. No employer could extend jurisdiction to the inside of a vehicle in the lot, except for illegal activities. Even in that case a cause, warrant and cop was required to search it.
A large amount of businesses have decided to challenge the common law regarding vehicle interiors as it stands. The sole reason is to prohibit the exercise of the individual's right to transport and use firearms. There's no mistaking that these employers are attempting to deny a previously existing and well recognized right, previously enjoyed everywhere in the US.
You just made the argument that the government can tell me what I must use my property for, and that I can't set rules for entry, because your right to park supersedes my right to my property.
Not true. You've been told that we the people have a right to keep arms in vehicles, and you can't infringe on our right.
I'm not infringing on your right to carry, you can keep your guns in your vehicle, but you can't park your vehicle with guns in my parking lot.
Deny it if you must, but that is an infringement on your employees right to bear arms.
You wish to park your vehicle in my property, against my wishes,
Nope, -- In the real world employees are required to park on your property, by local ordinance.
and thus you seek to violate MY rights, and you want ti use government to facilitate the violation of my individual property rights.
Rave on, -- you are banning guns, yet your 'rights' are violated? What right do you have to ban guns? And why do you want to?
You are creating some absurd Constitutional right to convenient parking. It doesn't exist.
True, it doesn't exist except in your mind.
When the government violates the rights of industry owners in the name of the worker, we have socialism.
When the government allows industry owners to violate the gun rights of employees in the guise of 'safety', we'll have socialism.
It's the same argument that liberals use to promote the right to kill the unborn, a non-existent right (to park conveniently/privacy) used to violate an unalienable right (to property/life).
When desperate luis, you use any argument. Give it up.
And they are free to either enter on my terms, or not...by having the freedom of choice, we are both free.
On the other hand, if the government enjoins me to accept men with guns on my property, against my wishes, then government has usurped my freedom without asserting yours because yours was never in danger of being usuroed by me via your choice to either enter or not enter my property under my terms.
Your right to keep and near arms exists solely for the purpose of defending your property...that includes your life.
When you assist in violating the most basic of all individual rights, the right to what is yours, you effectively negin negating all other rights. You may not violate one unalienable right in the name of another.
Life, Liberty, and Property
The right to life is essential to a free society. Without this most fundamental of human rights, still denied to millions of people the world over, the state is no longer a protector but an oppressor. Obviously, early Americans envisioned circumstances in which there could be a justified taking of life, such as capital punishment, but no one was to "be deprived of life...without due process of law."
Liberty is simply the freedom to act as one will to seek fortune or pleasure or contentment. Government control over the activities, wealth, education, dwelling, career, or any other part of human life is a constraint on liberty. Early Americans saw that certain governmental functions were set forth in Scripture, and thus not all state coercion would be a deprivation of a biblically conceived liberty. Modern American society, however, has expanded the role of government far beyond its biblical limits, such that the liberty the framers envisioned for U.S. citizens has been lost.
Fundamental to a free society is the basic right of property. Though this right is routinely trammeled today, to the framers it was inconceivable that this right would not exist in a free nation. Wrote John Adams,
Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty.... The moment, the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If Thou Shalt Not Covet , and Thou Shalt Not Steal, were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.1
Without the right of private property, a society will not grow and prosper. If the government will not stop my neighbor from taking what I have produced, I will not bother to produce. Not only are incentives corrupted, but the economy turns into chaos. Early in the 20th century, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out that an economy without private property and a free-market price system will fail for lack of information about how to allocate resources. An economic system with few or nonexistent private property rights will collapse just as the Soviet Union did a decade ago. -- Source
"On the other hand, if the government enjoins me to accept men with guns on my property, against my wishes,"
Get a life. It's a stinking parking lot with employee cars parked in it.
I'm not, and I don't want you to infringe on my right to keep and manage my property as I see fit, so keep your gun in your car, and your car off my property.
You have no right to park your car on my property unless I grant you that right.
There is no Constitutional right to park tommy...I don't care how much you try to twist this into a Second Amendment issue, it isn't, it's a parking issue.
My employee absolutely retains his right to bear arms, until the moment that he enters my property, at that moment, my property rights take over and he is allowed on my property only with my approval.
"...In the real world employees are required to park on your property, by local ordinance."
Bull hockers...I live in the real world, and employees are not required to drive to work, let alone park some place specifically.
Show me the ordinances.
"What right do you have to ban guns?"
My house, my property, my right...don't like it?
Don't enter.
"When the government allows industry owners to violate the gun rights of employees in the guise of 'safety'"
Lying now?
In the name of property rights, not safety.
You have no Constitutional right to park.
My reasoning for this is that I am never certain that I would be able to return to my home from yours to retrieve my self defense weapon without circumstances requiring its need.
If you were my employer and placed such restrictions on me then you would be minus one employee the next morning. The SCOTUS has determined that the police are not responsible for my safety, I and only I am responsible for that, therefore I demand the ability to carry anywhere I travel.
If the State places restrictions on where I may or may not carry then I am the one who determines if I will travel unprotected, not the State.
What does the Constitution do?
Does it "grant" rights?
Or does it impose limitations on the government's ability to encroach on already existing rights?
The latter of course.
The Constitution does not have to mention my rights for me to have those rights.
We agree on something.
Amazing.
Can you board a flight in the US carrying a weapon?
Argue your Second Amendment rights then.
True enough. But when the constitution specifically mentions a right, such as the right to keep and BEAR arms it trumps other rights.
Feel free to keep all free men off your property.
It may cut into your business, but that is your right, and your problem.
It amazes me how some think the property owner has no say if people bring arms onto their property.And they somehow think they have freedoms of speech, religion, and the like while on someones private property, when in fact they do not.
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