Posted on 05/28/2003 9:13:41 AM PDT by jdege
Written on: 5/28/03
It is interesting to see the Governor's Chief of Staff Charlie Weaver, a former Anoka County Prosecutor come out and telegraph the movement by Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) on the Conceal & Carry legislation he recently signed into law. As the public has learned more about the change there has been a natural backlash. The Special Session creates an opportunity to address the problems with the law, which goes into effect today.
While it is reasonable for a person or a business to protect their property, when the law allows the right of an individual entering that business to have more rights than the owner it seems backwards. In an attempt to smooth the edges of the most liberal gun legislation ever passed in the United States the Administration sees the need for an adjustment. Perhaps this is just an attempt to prevent the courts from finding the legislation unconstitutional, but it shows how ramroding legislation through the process is a poor way to govern.
The fact that this issue needs to be revisited shows how its initial passage was a rash act and signing it so rapidly was equally so. It was a purely partisan attempt to steamroll the Majority in the Senate and even though the Governor received a flawed bill and he signed it.
This creates an opportunity for the Senate Majority to embarrass both the Governor and Members of the House and the Minority Members of the Senate. When the bill was forced onto the agenda in the Senate there was little the DFL Majority could do to prevent the bill from passage. They held back on a stack of amendments at the Secretary's desk knowing full well the item had momentum.
The floor discussion by the Senate authors will now be available for full debate and now Sen. Mike McGinn (R-38, Eagan) will be able to correct his inadvertent pressing of the wrong button during final passage as his office stated. This debate may provide good fodder.
The rights of the owners to do exactly what? Force the disarmament of their customers?
Perhaps this is just an attempt to prevent the courts from finding the legislation unconstitutional,
I find no special wording in the Constitution that allows one person's irrational fears to outweigh another person's right to self defense.
If a store owner will post a sign stating that they guarantee my safety & security and will assume all liability for my injury or death resulting from an illegal act, I will leave my gun in the car. Of course I expect an armed escort to and from my car to the store entrance as well.
Not at all.
When you open a business to the public, you surrender many 'rights' that you would have otherwise.
For example, a business owner usually can't expect to limit his patrons to a single racial or religious group.
Nor can he reasonably require his patrons to surrender other Constitutional rights in order to enter his place of business - like the right to defend yourself and your family from attack.
But if you open your doors to the public, you have to expect the public to enter. If you open your doors to all of the public except for certain individuals, you have to tell those individuals you don't want them.
All are invited. They just have to abide by the owner's rules. Or do you disagree that the business owner has the right to set his rules for customers to follow?
Why should anyone have to surrender unalienable rights to open a business?
He cannot expect the law to provide a penalty for a customer not following his rules when he has not informed the customer of what they are.
I just refuse to be a patron in any facility that has a sign posted that says no firearms allowed. They posted a bunch here in Texas and albeit a few still exist many were removed when CHL and non-CHL patrons bitched about the free robbbery zone the store owners had established and took their money elsewhere.
Fear mongers profiting from BS lies of blood in the streets while promoting their own socialist agenda of sedition won't wash based on history........too many states have too many responsible citizens that carry per the RKBA's rental agreement called CHL-CCW !
But then 69 million, (+/-) gun owners didn't kill anyone yesterday and that wasn't considered nooooze worthy as the few criminals that did kill someone who more than likely didn't have the means to defend themselves.
Sorry for the rant.....Stay Safe !
I'm about as libertarian and pro-2nd Amendment as they come, but I agree with you on this cin (sign of the apocolypse? ;-))
Freedom of speech is an unalienable right, but if I owned a business and a bunch of lefties came in and started telling all of my customers how evil conservatives are, I would most certainly have the right to throw 'em out.
Not quite steady on this point, are you?
Would you say the same thing on a smoking ban thread?
/john
I don't have a problem with an individual owner declaring his business smoke-free either.
On many a thread cinFLA has said that he/she agrees that the govt can, and should, ban smoking in private businesses and has his/her approval while doing it. All becuase they don't like the smell of burning tobacco.
The owner then has to live with the freemarket consequences of such a decision and a posting.
While the owner of a small business (printing and office supply) in a small town in Montana a number of years ago, I had some gay activists come to town and demand that I print up some very weird and filthy brochures for them to hand out. I pointed to the sign above my counter and told them they could leave. They were informed by the local DA that such a sign was legal and appropriate and established my rights as a business owner in advance. They had no traction. I lived with the consequence of folks of that persuasion not doing business with me. Fine.
If an individual desires no firearms in his/her business, he/she has a right to make that the rule for their premises. If there is a backlash in the free market (as Squantos discussed above) then that is the consequence.
I do not believe a business owner should be forced to operate in such ways by the government, on either side of the issue.
As for me ... I'm armed in my computer business and welcome Conceal Carry...or even open carry by respectable and law-abiding patrons. But that's my decision on my property.
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