Posted on 10/09/2005 9:09:28 AM PDT by RightDemocrat
TALLAHASSEE -- A rare and spectacular showdown may be coming in Florida's Republican Party: Big Business vs. Big Guns. And the stakes couldn't be higher. To critics, it's about the safety of workplaces, including hospitals and churches, throughout the Sunshine State. To supporters, it's about the safety of employees who travel to and from those workplaces.
The dust-up is over the "guns-at-work" bill, which the National Rifle Association began pushing last month in Tallahassee to force all Florida businesses to allow firearms in the vehicles of any employee or visitor. Companies could keep policies banning guns from their buildings themselves but could no longer apply those policies to their parking lots.
Many businesses are either wary of or leaning against the proposal, including heavy-hitters such as Disney and local giants such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, CSX and Baptist Health System.
But the NRA is insistent. The group, which has donated nearly $1 million in Florida over the past decade, mostly to Republicans, is led in Tallahassee by former national President Marion Hammer. Hammer said the rights of gun owners should be intact in their vehicles, and the proposed law already gives businesses immunity from liability lawsuits in cases of workplace shootings.
"Your home is a slam dunk, but bridging that into the private property of an organization doesn't hold," said Mike Hightower, chairman of the Duval County Republican Party and lobbyist for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida. "I don't think people are going to want to cross that line."
In a telling sign of wariness, neither Gov. Jeb Bush, Senate President Tom Lee nor House Speaker Allan Bense are taking positions on the bill yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...
I assume the term "guns-at-work" was selected by opponents of the bill? It certainly gives a different impression from "guns locked in your car."
Yeah, I assume that the person writing the headline at the Florida Times-Union doesn't like the idea. "Guns at work" is deceptive. It's more like the employee self defense act.
GOOD! My Life Membership fee is being put to good use. Thank you, and I AM THE NRA!
Ugh....can they at least get past the very first line before they try to, IMHO,scare the uninformed?
An Armed Citizen
Is A Safe Citizen!
Disney is not a Republican company. That's one of the reasons this law is needed.
From the quantity of ridiculous headlines we see, you are giving quite a bit of praise to the MSM journalists. I don't think they are that smart.
...In a telling sign of wariness, neither Gov. Jeb Bush, Senate President Tom Lee nor House Speaker Allan Bense are taking positions on the bill yet....
Wariness?
That's a big yellow stripe down their backs that's showing.
"GOOD! My Life Membership fee is being put to good use. Thank you, and I AM THE NRA!" I agree and I'm also a LIFE MEMBER. Your RIGHT WE are the NRA. The Second Amentmand is guarding America and WE are helping.
It was a pretty conservative paper. Maybe it has changeed or maybe just the writer wanted to create a little controversy with title.
Suppose an employer tried to tell it's workers they couldn't keep a bible locked in the trunk of their car while on the job. Would that be acceptable to large numbers of people? How did the first amendment become more important than the 2nd?
A different approach would be to have automobiles declared as an extension of the home. Anything you could lawfully posses in your home would thereby be legal to possess in your vehicle, regardless of it's location.
In this way, the rights of private proprietorships to control their parking areas would be preserved, but corporations would be required to be "good citizens" who do not infringe the right to keep and bear arms.
This would seem to be a small price to pay for the substantial benefits which incorporation provides and it is completely consistent for the legislature to dictate what benefits and requirements attach to incorporation.
If a privately run hardware store wishes to disarm me in their parking lot but Home Depot is forbidden to do so, I know where I will choose to shop.
P8riot wrote:
A different approach would be to have automobiles declared as an extension of the home. Anything you could lawfully posses in your home would thereby be legal to possess in your vehicle, regardless of it's location.
What is being "preserved"?
What does a private proprietorship gain by acting against our Constitutional mandate that the RKBA's shall not be infringed?
Combine this issue with the argument about illegal aliens, open borders, crime and homeland security. Then you might have a way to cut the country club RINOs down to size.
The first conservative republican with national stature to do so, -- will become a real contender.
To me it's amazing that none of them realize that fact. -- There are millions of us calling for some real leadership, but not an honest man is to be found.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
If I own the business, I ought to be able to set the rules, even stupid rules like no guns in the workplace including vehicles parked on my lot. If you don't like the rules, then go find another job, or better yet, start your own business with your own rules.
It is absurd to ban commuters from having guns in their glove compartments. Especially when busiensses are already shielded from legal liability should those guns be misuesd.
About Allen Bense, it's too bad he decided to not run for the U.S. Senate next year.
Should I buy a Winnebago mobile home? /sarcasm
They gain the right to be secure in their private property. I believe that few will choose to take a stand against firearms in the face of competition from corporations which are not allowed to infringe the right. You may not carry on my private property even if I choose to carry on business on that property.
There is no right to incorporate and be granted limited liability. That is a legal privilege granted by legislatures based on expected benefits to the whole people. One of the benefits can be the extension of the right to keep and bear arms to corporate parking lots.
Or "commuter safety."
How about a sign stating "No Blacks or Jews Allowed"?
Labyrinthos wrote:
If I own the business, I ought to be able to set the rules, even stupid rules like no guns in the workplace including vehicles parked on my lot. If you don't like the rules, then go find another job, or better yet, start your own business with your own rules.
I agree. But if your "business" incorporates under state law in order to be granted the privilege of limited liability, then that privilege could be accompanied by an obligation to accomodate the right to keep and bear arms by employees.
Can't disagree about the headline. It's about as bias as bias gets. My quibble is in the real meaning. This isn't about company private property rights. It's about individual rights. The right to be secure in your papers and possessions and that right being extended into your own private vehicle while you are out and about.
Its' already been done in limited areas.
The police must treat your car as part of your personal property when they are forced to get a warrant to search. If they must get a warrant it is not a public place to be search willy nilly by anyone, even your boss.
the rights of private proprietorships to control their parking areas would be preserved,
What is being "preserved"?
What does a private proprietorship gain by acting against our Constitutional mandate that the RKBA's shall not be infringed?
They gain the right to be secure in their private property.
My gun locked in my car is not a security threat to their property. Can you agree?
I believe that few will choose to take a stand against firearms in the face of competition from corporations which are not allowed to infringe the right.
You may not carry on my private property even if I choose to carry on business on that property.
A gun locked in my car is not being "carried" on your property. Can you agree?
There is no right to incorporate and be granted limited liability. That is a legal privilege granted by legislatures based on expected benefits to the whole people. One of the benefits can be the extension of the right to keep and bear arms to corporate parking lots.
You are making part of my argument for me. Thanks. Are we in agreement then on the other parts above?
I interpret this to mean that these two are inclined to support their heavy contributors (who are concerned about their insurance premiums and little else), and the voters who put them into office be damned. They're just looking for a way to do it that doesn't draw a lot of attention. We're going to have keep the heat on, and their feet to the fire, or we'll be sold out.
"These two" should read these three.
You are asking the wrong question. A person doesn't have to gain anything to have rights. I predict that any law which forces private property owners to tolerate firearms owned by others on their property could be struck down by the US Supreme Court.
A law which requires someone to tolerate your bearing arms on another's property, in effect, prohibits that person from excluding you because you are bearing arms. Similar laws do exist in some circumstances with regard to racial discrimination. If you are suggesting that a law prohibiting discrimination against a person bearing arms, then that is much broader than a law concerning what people may have in their parked cars.
I would support laws which prohibit discrimination against those who bear arms, but I think that practicality concerns dictate that private property rights take precedence.
I still maintain that mandating that arms be allowed in corporate parking lots would achieve 99 percent of the benefit with virtually NO legitimate private property concerns.
Your points are well taken, but IMO, the NRA, of which I am a life member, is coming down against the side of property rights on this matter.
The premises of "big businesses" are private property and thus, what is allowed on those premises should, in a free country, be at the discretion of the owners. The NRA is falling into the liberal trap of thinking that the existence of businesses is justified by the fact that they fulfill a public service of some kind when in fact their existence is justified by the fact that they make money for their stockholders.
It may be the "right" decision in this case to allow workers to bring firearms onto private property, but it's not a good idea, in a free country, to give great power to government in order that it force everyone to do what for the moment strikes politicians as "right." Once it can force employers to allow employees to bring guns in, it could equally well force employers to prohibit such.
The point is that such things should be at the discretion of the property owner, not the government.
RKBA applies to public property and your own private property, not the private property of others. Same goes for the entire BOR.
Most legal interpretations read that as a prohibition against government action. The Second Amendment has never been "incorporated" under the Fourteenth Amendment by the US Supreme Court. "Incorporation" in this case being an invented process suggesting that the Supreme Court shall determine which of our rights can be infringed by the states and which shall not.
To extend the protections of such prohibition to every person would suggest that it would be permissible to outlaw discrimination based upon all of the factors which today are still legal. Do you wish to give up the right to discriminate against Democrats? Even though Democrats have a right to freely choose their political party?
I am not opposed to a law which prohibits discrimination based upon bearing arms. I just think that politically, the chances of passing a law constraining only corporations would be so much greater.
the rights of private proprietorships to control their parking areas would be preserved,
What is being "preserved"?
What does a private proprietorship gain by acting against our Constitutional mandate that the RKBA's shall not be infringed?
You are asking the wrong question. A person doesn't have to gain anything to have rights.
You claimed something is "preserved" by infringing on my right to have a gun in my car.
They gain the right to be secure in their private property.
My gun locked in my car is not a security threat to their property. Can you agree?
I believe that few will choose to take a stand against firearms in the face of competition from corporations which are not allowed to infringe the right.
You may not carry on my private property even if I choose to carry on business on that property.
A gun locked in my car is not being "carried" on your property. Can you agree?
There is no right to incorporate and be granted limited liability. That is a legal privilege granted by legislatures based on expected benefits to the whole people. One of the benefits can be the extension of the right to keep and bear arms to corporate parking lots.
You are making part of my argument for me. Thanks. Are we in agreement then on the other parts above?
I predict that any law which forces private property owners to tolerate firearms owned by others on their property could be struck down by the US Supreme Court.
A law which requires someone to tolerate your bearing arms on another's property, in effect, prohibits that person from excluding you because you are bearing arms.
Having a gun locked in my car while at work is not "bearing arms on another's property". Can you agree?
Similar laws do exist in some circumstances with regard to racial discrimination. If you are suggesting that a law prohibiting discrimination against a person bearing arms, then that is much broader than a law concerning what people may have in their parked cars. I would support laws which prohibit discrimination against those who bear arms, but I think that practicality concerns dictate that private property rights take precedence.
And I ask why parking lot property rights should take precedence over our right to keep a gun in our cars. Can you explain?
I still maintain that mandating that arms be allowed in corporate parking lots would achieve 99 percent of the benefit with virtually NO legitimate private property concerns.
There are lots of privately held companies in the USA. Why do you want them to have the power to ban guns in employees vehicles?
Sam Cree wrote:
RKBA applies to public property and your own private property, not the private property of others. Same goes for the entire BOR.
As I said before, your rights don't include bringing arms onto the private property of someone else. If the Courts have ruled that arms in a car are not really on that property, then the Courts are every bit as guilty of parsing the language as was Bill Clinton.
I still want to know what to do with my pistol which I have the "right to carry" when I get to the front gate of the parking lot.
I understand you may prohibit me form bringing it into the building, but my car is my home away from home. Why should you be able to dictate to me what I keep in it.
I am, in fact, an engineer. But perhaps I missed my calling.
My approach is not so much based on "incrementalism" though there may be good legal reasons to do so.
Rather, my thinking is very much influenced by a couple of principles that liberals never seem to consider. One principle is that "that government is best which governs least". Thus, if 99 percent of a benefit can be derived by a change in corporate powers, I prefer that to changing private property laws.
The other principle, and perhaps it has a name that I don't know, is that laws should be as simple, clear, and straightforward to enforce as possible. That is why the War on Some Drugs is an abomination and has led to restrictions on carrying cash or buying cold medicines. Violations of this principle are also responsible for filling our courtrooms with cases which should have been decided outside of courtrooms. In an attempt to be "fair" about everything, liberal laws create spider's nests of special cases and exceptions.
For that reason, I would prefer a broad change which outlaws all discrimination based upon bearing arms, rather than a "firearm in parking lot" exception to private property rights.
I don't really want to be able to dictate what you keep in your car. I just want to retain the right to be able to dictate what comes onto my own property, which includes cars and their contents.
FWIW, my opinion is that if as a society we are actually going to trust ourselves to keep and bear arms, and so far, we do, it's still in the BOR, then as employers, we shouldn't worry about our employees being armed. I personally let my (very few) employees bring arms onto my property. If there was one I didn't trust with a gun, I'd let him go rather than tell him to leave the gun at home. Because then trust would be the issue.
More to the point, I worry that large companies who prohibit arms on their property are doing it out of a desire to be politically correct, which is reprehensible. Or maybe they fear lawsuits, which is a comment on the legal profession.
In spite of all that, I don't think government should be given the power to direct property owners in what their employees may bring on the property. Make that strongly don't think.
Unfortunately, our very own US Supreme Court just trumped that right by an act of judicial activism, thus creating systemic abortion.
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