Lawmaker to push bill allowing guns at work

cbs42.com ^ | 23 November, 2012 | AP

[marktwain]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - An Alabama lawmaker is again pushing legislation that would let employees take handguns to work.

The Montgomery Advertiser reported Friday that state Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, said the bill is aimed at increasing personal safety.

[marktwain]

I find recognizing an employee's property rights in his vehicle to not infringe on an employer's property rights. Let the employer ban the whole vehicle or nothing.

[marktwain]

I also like the Wisconsin system, where employers are granted immunity from lawsuit *if* they allow their employees to be armed.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

This is problematic. Government has no real authority to “allow” a right. However, government can and should encourage citizens to *use* their rights.

In this case, there are many businesses that are subject to a greater amount of crime. So why not one or more laws *encouraging* such businesses to have armed employees?

A good way of doing this, for example, would be a law that protects businesses from lawsuits arising from the individual actions of their employees, no matter if they were in the right or in the wrong.

Importantly, this goes very far back in judicial history, that corporations could indeed be held responsible for the actions of their employees under some circumstances. But it is up to legislators to determine what those circumstances are.

Another law would be a rather uncommon law, to *enlarge* on the statute of posse comitatus. As it is written today, a Sheriff can *conscript* adult persons as ad hoc lawmen; however, nothing prevents state legislatures from *expanding* on this idea.

But in this case, a state legislature could authorize the Sheriffs of that state to conduct *training* of citizens in high crime risk employment, in exchange for greater (civil) legal protections if they are involved in a shooting as part of that employment.

That is, say a pizza company is encouraged to arm its deliverymen by a state law protecting that company from lawsuits based on their employees defending themselves, whether they did so properly or improperly. Then this enlargement of posse comitatus would provide their employees training from their local Sheriff, in exchange for which they, as individuals, are also given some protections from civil suits.

[RicocheT]

The solution fair both to employers and employees is to let employees lock personal self defense weapons in their car parked on the employee parking lot. That way the employer can regulate what comes into the work building and the employee isn’t defenseless driving to or from work.

If the employer wants everyone disarmed inside, it should have security and limit access as a disarmed area seems to attract mass murders and angry ex-spouses.

[Joe 6-pack]

This becomes problematic when they start defining "workplace." A landscaper or a cable repairman may have an office that they work out of, but the vast majority of their work is performed on other peoples' property. A business owner may in fact, rent or lease his office space and the terms of that lease may restrict what he or she may allow on the property.

I'm a 2nd Amendment purist, but I also believe in property rights and freedom of assembly. If an employer doesn't want firearm owners to work for them, or to transport their weapons onto company property, they have that right. Like all rights however, they come coupled with responsibilities, and a property owner who inhibits the ability of those on their property to defend themselves must assume responsibility for the safety and security of those on the property.

[TYVets]

There is a saying that has been repeated many times here on FR:

Your property ends at my tires.

[ansel12]

A few years ago there was a very vocal FR crowd espousing that property rights protected the right to ban what was inside of the workers cars, I wonder where they went?