Posted on 03/29/2006 10:04:37 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
Should you be able to take your gun to work?
08:17 AM CST on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 By Vicente Arenas / KHOU
There's a battle looming over your right to take a gun to work. The controversy centers on whether you should be able to leave a firearm in your car.
If Granger Durdin could take her gun everywhere, she said she would.
"With the crime rates the way they are and with being a young female, I sometimes feel a little bit more vulnerable and with a gun I have the protection that I need to be safe," said Durdin.
The 29-year-old manager is not alone.
"It's very important. You don't know when someone is going to come after you," said gun owner Brenda Lorisch.
In Texas, businesses have the right to keep concealed weapons out of buildings. Now there's a move to allow companies to prohibit them from parking lots, too and that has some concealed carriers upset.
"I believe that's an infringement on civil liberties," said gun owner Pat Warren.
There are no real statistics that will tell you how many people take their guns to work and leave them in their cars. But when it comes to firearms, people in the gun industry will tell you that most people who have licenses to carry them won't leave home without them.
"It takes away our right to protect ourselves going to and from work," said Cheryl Lamar, Hot Wells Firing Range.
Houston-based ConocoPhillips is challenging a law in Oklahoma that allows workers to leave guns in their cars parked on company property.
The company said it is simply trying to provide a "safe and secure working environment for its employees by keeping guns out of their worksites, specifically refineries, natural gas plants and distribution terminals."
11 News found a sign outside an area plant prohibiting weapons, but saw no such signs in the company's parking lot. Still it's clear guns aren't welcome there.
When asked if she thought that this could lead to workplace violence, "Yes, I've heard that. I don't agree," said Sue King, NRA board member.
King grew up around guns. She said ConocoPhillips' efforts are a waste of time.
"If you think back to the incidents of workplace violence that we occasionally, rarely have in this country and keeping the Oklahoma legislation in mind, you'll realize that those people who commit workplace violence are either outright criminals, they're mentally unbalanced or they are true psychopaths," King said.
"I feel that it's a problem," said Tomasita Garza, Texans for Gun Safety.
This group disagrees with King, saying there are other problems with leaving a gun in a car.
"The reason being no vehicle is safe. No matter what kind of deterrents you use to keep your car from being stolen, it can still be stolen," said Garza.
ConocoPhillips is one of several companies asking an Oklahoma judge to clear the way for employers to prevent workers from keeping pistols in the parking lot.
The company says it, "supports the second amendment and the rights of law abiding citizens to own guns".
It's that amendment that granger Durdin says it gives her a little more confidence and the right to protect herself wherever she may be.
That's good enough for me. I share your discomfort with the idea of "corporations" having civil rights like people. For one thing, a "corporation" is immortal...
Or perhaps the US mint.
No amount of other twisting of the issue can deny that logic.
In the State of Texas I have the right to carry a gun with me and can enter most places with it. I accept the responsibilities to know where it is allowed and where it is not. When my boss says no guns in the workplace I agree and abide. When the same boss tells me what I can leave out in my car there is a problem.
But you are correct. I can work elsewhere.
I'm a civilian, I work for a civilian company that does not own the pink slip to my vehicle. I work on a military base. The government doesn't own the pink slip for my vehicle either, but I am restricted, as to what I can have in my vehicle.
Well, you could always go and work for a company with no weapons policy.
You're speaking the eulogy for the funeral of property rights. In order for my use of my own private property to be legal, I have to convince somebody else to be satisfied with my reasons. The fact is, it's my property. In order to ban my use of my property, you have to convince (somebody) that it constitutes a violation of someone else's property rights.
Refusing to hire ugly people isn't a violation of property rights, because nobody has a right to a job at my company. It's a privilege I grant, and I'm free to grant it selectively.
I agree, though, that the rules have become somewhat byzantine. My wife represents employers in employment law issues, so I hear some great stories.
I can only imagine. It must be interesting--and frustrating.
Probably so.
That's true. And your tires aren't allowed to touch his pavement unless the owner gives his permission. So what's your beef?
That the employer, in this argument, is trying to establish a property claim to my car. What do you think we've been talking about?
I'm with you. I'd have major problems with such a rule. But that doesn't mean the owner should have legal problems as a result. If we attack his property rights in order to have our way on his land, it can only come back and bite us when someone else uses the law to have their way on our land.
That's happening today, with total smoking bans in restaurants.
Then you're confused. He doesn't want any claims to your car whatsoever. He simply wants you to park somewhere else, and you insist on forcing your way onto his land anyway. By rights he should set up a fence and guard booth, and staff it with armed guards. Forcible attempts to enter his property should be met with swift and lethal force.
That's an interesting example. Apparently, Washington DC is one of the few places that bans discrimination based on personal appearance.
Which may explain why so many of our politicians are butt-ugly.
But government property is different. It belongs to our lords and masters, so of course they can make rules. They can search your vehicle if they want... heck, they can do a body-cavity search on you anytime they want. They're our masters.
Nonsense. All contracts have terms. When you agree to those terms, I guess you could say you've "given up your rights," but it would be a particularly worthless characterization. The reality is that the employer gives up rights: they grant you various conditional waivers to use their property, equipment, etc., as well as an obligation to pay you. If you refuse to comply with the conditions of those waivers, they can revoke them and kick you off their property.
To pretend that that's some sort of slavery is insane. The difference between a slave and an employee is that you can quit. Slaves can't quit. Employment without terms and obligations is a fiction that only exists in your fantasies.
It is easy to say employers have absolute control over the interiors of cars and trucks allowed on their property, but I think the courts would disagree once an employer started such nonsense. The media will support anything against a gun, but an employer that tried to ban baby seats, or plaid seat covers, or carrying a spare tire, a bible in the glove compartment, or keeping windshield washer fluid in the windshield washer fluid holder would lose in court, justifiably so.
They have absolutely no control whatsoever over the interior. All they can do is say "park" or "don't park". That's it.
I think the courts would disagree once an employer started such nonsense.
That's probably true, but not very interesting; the court has a very sketchy history of upholding property rights--not to mention other civil rights.
...justifiably so.
In other words, you believe in taking away people's property rights unless you agree with their decisions? Nekulturny, Kamarad!
That is true, but it shows what can be done on certain property and what cannot. The same people that can search me on their property, cannot search me on mine without a warrant...or at least it's supposed to be that way.
That's why I didn't bother getting another CCW when I moved back to VA.
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