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
Quoting from Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles:
Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built. The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth. Economic levelling, conservatives maintain, is not economic progress. Getting and spending are not the chief aims of human existence; but a sound economic basis for the person, the family, and the commonwealth is much to be desired.
You are not the owner of my property, you can't use the force of government to usurp my rights as a property owner, and continue calling yourself a conservative.
If forcing me via legislation to allow you to enter my property bearing arms against my wishes is conservative, then imminent domain is as well.
With all due respect, do you believe that an employer has the right to enforce their "policy" by searching my vehicle?
His property is on my property, he has no right to be on my property unless I grant him access, access is conditional to meeting my rules.
My right trumps.
Yes.
Could an employer require that everyone drive a specific make/model/yr/color of vehicle in order to park in THEIR lot. even if it has no relevence to the JOB in which you are performing?
Well, park your car someplace else.
There is no balance of rights.
Your Constitutional right to bear arms prevents the government from passing legislation restricting your ability to own and carry weapons.
I am not the government, and the parking lot is my property, I make the rules, neither you nor the government do.
Yes.
Is it your job to have, or theirs to give to you?
David...you are a socialist.
So when the mailman steps on my property to deliver my mail I as the property owner can detain and strip search him because I have a POLICY that everyone that comes on my property is subjected to being strip searched... My right to have that policy and enforce it trumps???
I am not trying to argue I just want to take your position to its logical conclusion.
Yes. Ford does that. Specific makes, anyway. ;-)
However this is a case where they appear to be forced to overlap on occasion.
Overall, though, you are stating more directly what I myself said. This issue appears to be primarily centered around businesses. My take: If you own a store that says "no guns", then fine, I have a judgement call to make. If I'm carrying, do I go in unarmed? Or do I take my business elsewhere?
If I'm not carrying, then I still might not patronize your establishment out of principle. As I said, let the market decide.
If it's your own home, your rules most certainly apply. As does my own freedom to disarm and be welcome, or leave.
So an employee in this case is not the same as a customer correct? Could a customer be subjected to the same search?
My parking lot is no less my property than my home is, my rights are not lessened by the fact that I don't sleep in my parking lot.
There is no overlap of rights here, there is however a willingness by "conservatives" to violate a very basic principle of conservatism.
If I offer you a job, and make it clear to you that submitting yourself and your vehicle for a search is a condition of employment, and you agree to take the job, you forfeit your right to stop me from conducting that search.
You don't agree with my policy?
Don't take the job.
Furthermore, if I also tell you prior to you accepting a job, that I retain the right as an owner to change the rules of employment as I see fit, and you accept the job under those conditions, I can change my rules and decide to conduct searches of vehicles AFTER having hired you, and still be within my rights as an employer and a property owner.
You are not forced to remain employed by someone whose policies you disagree with.
Yes.
You may leave my property to avoid the search, and you can refuse to do business with me if you are in disagreement with my policies.
If I post signs on the entrances to my lot letting you know that guns are not allowed on my property, and that I retain the right to search vehicles parked, and you enter the lot, then by YOUR action, you accepted my terms.
Period. End of story.
You keep saying that, Luis, but in fact the point remains debatable.
David Osbourne made a good point in how not allowing firearms at a destination (for example, your place of business) infringes a person's ability to carry to and from that destination, something that an employee at aforementioned business would have to contend with every day.
What is your answer to this specific example?
Qualcomm in San Diego forced me to make this very decision in late 1998. The project I walked off on was severely delayed and cost them quite a few dollars. I can only assume it was worth it to them.
As an individual, I'd agree. But corporations only have the rights given to them in our incorporation laws. That means they have a LIMITED private property right.
Can a corporation state that political pamphlets can't be locked in someone's glove box? Or their religious talismans?
Not being the litigious sort, this didn't occur to me until just now, but consider this:
If the state where your business resides allows shall-issue carry like Florida does, and your business restricts that law within it's private boundries, have you taken liability suits into account? A colorable argument could be made that if you impinge on someone's right to carry and they subsequently fall victim to workplace violence due to their disarmed status, you could be held responsible.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm merely pointing out that there is probably a lawyer or two out there who could use this to make your life unpleasant and unprofitable.
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