Joanie wrote:
When I refer to 'private property' (and specifically in the case of this argument), I define it as owned by individuals (whether it be a single individual, a family, a large group of stockholders represented by an elected board of directors, etc.) as opposed to government-regulated 'public property'.
And allowing the government to make rules as to how I determine my private property will be used (whether 'I' be a single individual, a family, or a large group of stockholders) is as foreign to the blueprint for this republic as allowing the government to tell me what color I must paint my house or my business.
Our Constituion is our 'rule', our Law of the Land. States can make constitutional rules about how you use your property. Upholding the RKBA's while at work is one of those rules.
Assuming that Business has no 'right' to ignore our public policy … Just what do you include in the vague term 'our public policy'?
Our US Constitution, and those of our States are 'policy'. -- They are not vague..
Do you also include the New London 'public policy' that the New London Development Corporation has a right to seize Susette Kelo's property for development purposes? (I'm sure you don't, being that the largest portion of your post simply reeks (pleasantly :) of a belief in conservative ideology).
Reeks? -- How coy :)...
My point is, why the adulation of 'public policy'?
Straw man.. I have no "adulation", as you well know. I simply support the Constitution as written.
Especially when it infringes on property rights?
Banning a gun from my property, my car, "infringes on property rights"..
If I build a small business in town, and logically construct a small parking lot for my prospective employees, that lot is my private property.
Do you admit that the town has the power to mandate that lot be used as a condition of doing business?
The fact that I do business on that private property does not diminish the fact that it is mine. If I am an extraordinarily eccentric person, I have the Constitutional right to tell my employees that they are not allowed to wear pink shirts to work, or park non-American-made cars on my lot (unconstitutional civil rights laws notwithstanding).
So? Are you claiming eccentricity gives you the right to ban my car [w/gun inside] from your parking lot while I'm conducting business with you?
Again. -- What advantage does business gain by banning guns?
That's a very good question for which I myself do not believe there is a reasonable answer. (As squantos wrote in a post above, and I share his sentiments: I won't work where I can't carry, and I won't spend my money where I can't carry).
That's his choice. Many, if not most people, have very little choice in jobs or parking. Should this mean they lose their RKBA's while going to work?
But neither is it my constitutional right to second-guess a business's decisions as to how it manages its property.
Most of us have sworn to protect & defend our Constitution. When a business 'manages' to ban guns, I'll second guess them.
I simply would not choose to work for such a business.
I am an elected official in my township
Then you swore an oath, as I did, to protect & defend.
and I often do work in my office at night, when the building is empty, except for the occasional police officer doing paperwork on a lower floor. I now carry my .38 with me during those hours. If all of the above were the same, but I worked for a privately-owned company, and that company handed down a regulation that disallowed me from carrying on company property (whether it be in the company building or parking lot), I would think the company extremely foolish and no doubt buckling under the pressures of political correctness, and I would look for work elsewhere.
I most definitely would not seek to stifle, through government regulation, the company's ability to make such decisions.
So you would in effect surrender your right to carry to an "extremely foolish" rule -- "buckling under the pressures of political correctness" ..
What can I say? That's your choice, one which I can not approve.
If we, as citizens, attempt to force other citizens to justify their personal property decisions, because we ourselves vehemently disagree with them,
We all agreed to live under the Constitutions rule of law over two hundred years ago. Property decisions that affect my RKBA's violate that agreement.
then we are no better than our ever-more-tyrannical government that seeks to regulate (and often succeeds) every decision that business makes.
The Constitution clearly delineates the limited powers of government.
Yep, and it is clearly within the power of a State to require that parking lot owners comply with our RKBA's.
Conservative ideology seeks to reflect that belief in our state and local governments as well. The power to tell individual people, or the businesses they own, what they can and cannot allow on their property (short of items that disrupt domestic tranquility and threaten general welfare)
Attempts to ban guns from parking lots are obviously disturbing 'domestic tranquility' in some States.
plays no part in the Founders' vision of the role of any government based on republican principles.
It is not a republican principle to allow gun bans..
"States can make constitutional rules about how you use your property."Translation: government can usurp your property rights.
You support eminent domain.
"Banning a gun from my property, my car, "infringes on property rights"...
Repeating the lie again Josef?
No one is banning your gun from your car, you just have to park it off my property.
"Are you claiming eccentricity gives you the right to ban my car [w/gun inside] from your parking lot while I'm conducting business with you?"
No, my right as the owner of the property..the individual who paid for it, pays to maintain it, and pays taxes on it, gives me the right to set rules of access.
"Attempts to ban guns from parking lots are obviously disturbing 'domestic tranquility' in some States."
Translation: mob rule force of government trump individual rights.
Squantos and tpaine, from reading posts written by both of you over the last seven-plus years, I know that, unlike many in the government who
call themselves conservatives and defenders of the Constitution, and yet consistently betray both without even the slightest wrenching of personal conscience, both of you genuinely are (conservatives and defenders).
And, as are Jeff and I, both of you are 'from my cold, dead hands' defenders of the Second Amendment, especially.
Where it appears that the two of you, and Jeff and I, do not see eye-to-eye is in defining the line between defense of our Second Amendment RKBA and defense of the rights inherent in ownership of personal property, vesus government regulation of that property.
And, even in a debate as vitally important as this, it would appear that even genuine conservatives must agree to disagree. So, rather than create even the appearance of 'division in the ranks,' it’s probably best that we allow this debate to dissolve into silence born of respect. :)
Continued best to you both.
(No response necessary. Going to be off-line for several days … )
~ joanie ....