Luis and others apparently believe that men have no Rights except those granted by the state (i.e, "Constitutional Rights"), and no man's Rights can be violated by someone other than an agent of the state.
I believe that men have many Rights, and that only a few of them are enumerated in our Constitution. As Jefferson, stated, governments are instituted by men to secure these Rights. If a foreign government is attempting to steal your land, the government has the power and the obligation to stop it. If another citizen is attempting to kill you, the government has the power and obligation to stop it. If another entity, such as a corporation, is attempting to dictate your vote or control what you have in your vehicle, the goverment again has the power and obligation to stop it.
Many people forget that the colonists rebelled not only against the British crown, but also British corporations, such as the East India Tea Company. (I suppose in the mind of some folks, that makes Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson "socialists").
Ultimately, Rights are something that you are willing to fight for and die for, which many men have. Free speech, jury trials, Right to bear arms, and the like all meet this criteria. Men have died for and killed for these concepts. How many men do you know that have fought for the "right" for a multinational corporation to conduct Soviet-style searches through their workers privately owned vehicles? To suggest that this is a "right" is absurd and a perversion.
As to property rights, these should be held highly in a Free society. However, I cannot use my property to infringe upon the Rights of other citizens. I can't play music at 3:00 AM that disturbs my neighbors even though it's *my* property, since that infringes upon their Right to peace and quiet (yes, they have that Right, even though it is not in the Constitution).
I do not have the "right" to allow the Russian Air Force to build an airstrip on my property since the presence of said airbase would threaten the Rights of my fellow citizens, even though it's *my* property.
Additional examples are legion, but the point here is that you cannot use your property to deprive other citizens of their Rights. Corporations should not be able to use their property to deprive citizens of their Right to self-defense, their right to be secure in their possessions, and their right to keep and bear arms.
Luis and others apparently believe that private property CAN be used to infringe upon the Rights of other people.
Finally, we get to contract law. Contract law should NOT be absolute. Contracts should be "null and void" whenever fraud is involved, or whenever force is used or implied, or under duress, and so on. Fortunately, existing law recognizes this fact most of the time. I think Luis might even agree with me on this one.
Delving further, we arrive at two more basic questions: "can a man surrender his Rights via a contract?" and "even if a man can morally surrender his Rights via a contract, does the state (whos primary purpose is to defend individual Rights) have an obligation to prevent such contracts from occurring?"
Dealing with the former question, I absolutely believe the answer to this question is "no". Luis probably disagrees. Even if you sign a contract saying you surrender the "right to self defense", this contract is NULL and VOID. Same with contracts involving slavery. Or contracts involving the surrender of your arms. You can't sign away your Liberties, and anyone, such as an anti-gun corporation, that asks you to is an enemy of Liberty.
The next question is should the state recognize such contracts? Again, my answer is "no". Since the state is charged with protecting individual Rights, does it not have a duty to nullify contracts that result in one side giving up their basic Rights? Imagine the society that would exist if in order to feed his family, a man was forced to sign a contract detailing whom he would vote for, how he would spend his money, what possessions he was "allowed" to keep in his car, and so on. It would be a quasi-feudal society, which is the antithesis of a Free Republic based on individual Rights.
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 — 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.
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.
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.