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
most have at least 20 years with another LE agency.
SORRY, that yours are NOT.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
If your "contract" violates my Rights, how is it a legal contract? I can no more sell myself to you as a slave than you could purchase me off the auction block.
Considering the amount of formal training, and informal practice, I've had with firearms... I am more qualified to carry firearms than most SWAT team members.
And yet folks like Luis would strip me of a tool as a condition of employment. Their own irrational fears are what cause situations whereby so many lives are lost. Setting up a free fire zone for any nut case who happens to have a "bad day".
I'd rather have to try and sneak out a back door to make it to my car for my 10mm, than I would having to try and improvise a weapon by throwing computer components at someone pointing a gun my direction. The nut cases are notorious for ignoring "No Weapons" signs.
Leaves the rest of us at a bit of a disadvantage. It should also leave idiot employers at a legal liability disadvantage.
free dixie,sw
Yet here he is at #424, doing just that:
"-- my right to free speech ends at your property's edge. So do Second Amendment rights.
Anyone with half a brain can understand that, those with less than half a brain have problems with that concept. --"
Proof positive that he believes our right to carry arms in our property, our cars, "ends" at the edge of any other property. Sad delusion.
DC replies:
Technically, it does end, in a way. It's that demarcation line that is important.
I don't see the property line as important as the overall principle that our right to carry shall not be infringed. Carrying arms is an absolute & inalienable human right that very few 'reasonable regulations' should affect .
-- Real estate property rights however are very alienable, and always have been, even under our Constitution.
'Reasonable regulations' abound affecting how we can use & control our real estate property.
Parking lot gun bans are unconstitutional because real estate property rights do not trump our very real inalienable right to carry arms.
From the tires down is his property. That being said, from the tires up is MY property.
Yep, its a reasonable compromise on the issue. -- But luis is not a reasonable man. 475
i KNOW what we were ordered to do by "management".
free dixie,sw
perhaps, it is "a creature" of "liability-worried modern America", but BOTH of my last employers REQUIRED us to park in "our designated parking lot" & "to display the employee parking sticker", in the rear windshield.
Your proof means nothing to luis. He has convinced himself that no workers in America are forced to use company parking.
Its become a blind obsession because he thinks this makes his point.
well, i'd guess he's free to believe me or not.
i KNOW what we were ordered to do by "management".
free dixie,sw
One of the main points being missed here is that while the gun banning fools are free to ~believe~ their delusions, they are NOT free to act on them by infringing on our right to carry arms.
Luis' attitude is typical of the "Master/Slave" mindset. Instead of dealing with their employees as equal and free individuals, they see them as assets and property. His unreasonable fear of firearms could stem from the same paranoia that Slave Holders used to have about their property arming themselves.
Luis' attitude is typical of the "Master/Slave" mindset. Instead of dealing with their employees as equal and free individuals, they see them as assets and property.
His unreasonable fear of firearms could stem from the same paranoia that Slave Holders used to have about their property arming themselves.
Lets be generous and assume he really does agree that our RKBA's is inalienable. -- If this is true, then we must reluctantly conclude that he suffers from some type of cognitive disassociation problem. -- However, in either case, professional help is indicated, imo.
There is definately a disconnect going on in there somewhere.
However, it does my Right to property no harm to allow someone else their own means of defense while on my property. In fact, in times of crisis said help could be contracted/enlisted to help defend my property.
The logic is inherent and consistent.
Agreed to a point. I cannot disarm you arbitrarily without providing an adequate replacement that would be acceptable to both parties. Absent that, you have people like Luis running roughshod over their plantations.
We've assigned some of our alienable rights to control property to constitutional government. [to 'we the people']
We've given government authority to act in our Name, but the power inherent remains OURS. We can, theoretically, take it back and exercise said powers on our own if we feel the government is abusing its power. As far as our Rights are concerned, those we never ceded to government. We allocated a certain part of government as PROTECTION for those Rights.
We can never assign our inalienable rights to bear arms to constitutional government, nor to the control of property owners, - people like luis.
No one can be counted on to be there 24/7 for you to protect you. You, yourself, are your best means of personal self defense. As a property owner, it does not make sense to restrict the carrying of firearms by employees/friend/ect for exactly the reasons we have already discussed.
If you are on my property, without my permission, you have forfeited your Right to Life. You are trespassing. If I invite you onto my land, say for the aforementioned barbeque, this does not give you approval to set up a political rally in my front yard. If I ask you to leave, you had best get yourself gone.
However, the idea that I would have you divest yourself of tools that could prove useful to me in certain situations is as illogical as it is unethical.
The point is that an alienable right to control real estate property [as luis argues] can not trump an inalienable right to be armed.
We've assigned some of our alienable rights to control real estate property to constitutional government. [to 'we the people']
We can never assign our inalienable rights to bear arms to constitutional government, nor to the control of real estate property owners, - people like luis.
Agreed to a point.
I cannot disarm you arbitrarily without providing an adequate replacement that would be acceptable to both parties.
Luis argues he can disarm you arbitrarily. Period.
Providing an adequate replacement [security guards?] does not justify an infringement of our right to be armed.
Real estate owners do not, and never have had a power to arbitrarily disarm people that work on or visit their property. -- Rational people have compromised to such irrational disarmament demands by agreeing not to carry in their buildings, [IE - their personal space]
I hope you can agree that their arbitrary demands that we disarm in parking lots are beyond rationality.
Rights cannot conflict and still be considered Rights. It's illogical. It harms my property Rights not at all that you exercise your RKBA on my property. Especically if you are leaving a firearm in your conveyance in my parking lot. The conveyance is yours. I can have no legitamate control over its contents.
If I invite you onto my land, say for the aforementioned barbeque, --
--- I cannot disarm you arbitrarily without providing an adequate replacement that would be acceptable to both parties.
I doubt there is an 'acceptable' way to disarm your visitors. -- If a mad gunman appears at your BBQ, shoots all the security personnel, the rest of us would be unarmed.
That's unacceptable in the USA. We have an inalienable right to be armed.
If this terrorist war continues, you can bet that we will be arming ourselves at social events.
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