Posted on 04/25/2008 1:51:46 PM PDT by dbehsman
While clowning around with my grandchildren one day, I suddenly shouted, "Look at the sky, it has turned from blue to green."
Try as I might, I could never convince them that it was true, because they could see and couldn't be fooled. So it is with Robert Levy's column ("Employers Must Pull The Trigger," Our Opinion, April 22).
Levy claims that our right to have firearms locked in our cars in a parking lot is not about the Second Amendment but about the mythical right of corporations to usurp the Constitution and ban guns. But Levy didn't pull it off because we can see the truth. And the price he's asking us to pay for permission to do business with an anti-gun corporation could mean losing our lives - and that price is as clear as the sky is blue.
The Legislature passed, and Gov. Charlie Crist signed, a law to preserve the self-defense rights of law-abiding men and women in public parking lots. It reaffirms existing rights that have been jeopardized by politically motivated corporate policies.
Big business fought this measure, feigning corporate "private property rights" - a baseless argument considering that business consents to laws that limit property rights. Corporations must abide by civil rights laws, zoning laws, safety inspections and fire codes among others. Laws even dictate the number, size and placement of parking places and mandate space for shopping cart storage in publicly accessible parking lots.
Even Barry Richard, the attorney hired by the Florida Chamber to pitch its side, has acknowledged the truth. In a March 24, 2006, opinion paid for by the chamber, Richard honestly admitted, "The right to control one's property is not absolute. The state can regulate use of and access to property for the purpose of protecting the public health, safety and welfare. State statutes, for example, prohibit the possession of certain materials on private property that constitute a public nuisance or safety hazard ... or the exclusion from public accommodations based upon race, gender, handicap, religion or national origin."
Clearly, the state can - and did - act to protect the right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves when traveling and in publicly accessible parking lots. It is definitely a safety issue, as a living person is clearly more important than an asphalt parking lot.
NRA believes in private property rights, but unlike citizens, corporations are discretionary creations of government. They come into existence through charters created by legislatures. Corporate interests don't override the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.
Shrill arguments for property rights or profits must not take precedence over the lives of hardworking men and women. An employer's political philosophy or contempt for firearms rights does not trump a law-abiding person's fundamental, right to self-protection.
My motivation in teasing my grandchildren was simply to teach them to stand up for what they can see with their own eyes and what they know is true. Although Levy may continue to claim it's not about the Second Amendment, that clearly doesn't make it true.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
BTTT!
Sure they do. Corporations override our 4th amendment rights when they test for off-site use of drugs, alcohol, or smoking.
I am so delighted to see this perspective gaining traction. We the people, through our legislatures, have created corporations to benefit all of us. This artificial creation should not be the instrument for denying us the right to defend ourselves.
That's a dangerous argument. It invites someone to say that individuals have the right to own guns but corporations can be banned from manufacturing and selling them.
Dangerous?
Do you mean we would have to acquire guns that are produced by privately held companies, partnerships, non-profit organizations, government owned armories and sole proprietorships rather than corporations?
Corporations today are prohibited from manufacturing machineguns for civilian purchase; so it has already happened. That is, control of corporations has infringed our rights.
Assuming that the Heller decision is proper, the lower courts will readily recognize that Congress cannot prohibit the manufacture of products the keeping and bearing of which is protected by the Second Amendment. Even the nonsense of controlling the imports of such products should cease.
Does this extend to the entire BOR or just the second amendment?
The whole thing.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act which eventually led to the break up of Standard Oil was intended to curb some of the excesses made possible by business cooperatives.
At one point in time, Standard Oil was selling gasoline in Oregon, I think it was, for below the amount of tax per gallon. The intention was to drive the competition out of business, using resources earned in other parts of the country, and then to use their resulting monopoly to charge whatever they could get without competition for the product.
It worked for a while until people realized that it was possible for corporations to behave in a manner which did not benefit those whose government created the opportunity to have corporations.
I'm not a believer in forcing corporations to "give back" to the community. Under the powers assigned to Congress, I couldn't find the one that read, "Because we created the opportunity for corporations to exist in the first place".
Unfair business practices which negatively affect interstate commerce, on the other hand, are fair game for Congressional intervention (if Congress so chooses).
The federal government forcing a corporation (or any privately run business) to honor the Bill of Rights is lunacy. Why must a privately held company honor the 2nd amendment when even the states aren't required to honor it?
So, when the Fortune 500 collectively decide that membership in the Democratic Party is a condition of employment, that would be okay?
Employees today are still individually responsible for not murdering their co-workers. And employees should have the right to defend themselves from those co-workers. Money supplied after the fact from the deep pockets of corporations is no substitute for the right to life.
Exactly. They have priveliges that real persons do not, and they shelter real persons from the consequences of their actions, and thus they may be subject to some limitations and controls that real persons are not.
That said, the second amendment does not apply to corporations, except perhaps to protect them as "persons", albeit artificial ones. "Shall not be infringed" however, applies to governments, not persons, real or artificial. But corporations are subject to the law, and if the legislature passes a law saying that the inside of a private vehicle is not their property, then it's not, and they may not restrict what is stored there, except as the might allow some such restrictions. The law in several states now does that, and they must obey it.
No because that wold in turn deny the people the right to keep and bear them. What other purposes could such a law have? If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court rules the second amendment protects an individual right, they aren't likely to look kindly on efforts to infringe upon it via these sort of "back door" schemes.
The states are required to honor it. That being one of the "privileges and immunities" of US Citizens that the 14th amendment was *supposed* to protect from state infringements. The primary one in fact.
But are you arguing that a corporation could require you to remove a "I support the troops and their mission" bumper sticker from your vehicle as a condition of parking in their lot?
But so are individuals, partnerships, etc. It's not a matter of restricting the actions of artificial persons, but rather of all persons.
And it's unconstitutional as Hell.
I believe it should be constitutional. Don't you? Whether or not the Board of Directors would think that's "okay" is another issue.
Even more ridiculous, how about this -- the Fortune 500 collectively deciding that non-smoking (including non-working hours) is a condition of employment?
That is correct. The state has the power to do so. If the corporation doesn't like it, they can relocate to another state.
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