There is often a struggle to maintain a balance between personal rights and property rights. Neither one is absolute, and both tend to be handled differently in various states.
In general, property owners have a lot of leeway regarding who is allowed onto their property. It becomes a little more clouded when it comes to property that is generally open to the public, such as private businesses. A private business can, for example, disallow people from coming on their property if they are handing out fliers for the competition and can decide their employees are not allowed to wear t-shirts to work. They can't, however, make rules restricting race, religion, age, sex, etc.
Where is gets fuzzier is when it comes to gun rights. In Ohio, any business can put up a sign prohibiting people from bringing guns into their business. They can put up a sign for the parking lot, but there is no criminal penalty for violating a parking lot prohibition, unless you are asked to leave and you refuse. But, employers can still prohibit employees from having firearms in their personal vehicles while on company property.
The main issue at hand is that not only are employees being disarmed while at work, but the employee's Constitutional right to self defense are also denied to and from work, unless they're able to find a place to park off company property. It can even force a change in plans affecting their private life. For example, a person planning on going hunting or to the range on their way home from work is unable to do so.
The flippant answer to the issue is to say if they don't like it, they can always find another job. Of course, in this economy, that's easier said than done in many cases. Plus, we're not talking about banning chewing gum. The right to self defense is guaranteed by the Ohio Constitution. So, people are forced to choose between their lives and their livelihood, a decision they shouldn't have to make.
Numerous states, such as Florida, do not allow employers to put such restrictions on an employees personal, private vehicle. Ohio should follow suit. For that reason, this is one of the reforms being sought in 2009 by Ohioans For Concealed Carry.
While workplace violence is a very real issue, treating every gun owner as a potential mass murderer makes no more sense than treating everyone who has a prescription as a drug abuser. Not to mention that a person who decides to commit workplace violence isn't going to change his mind because guns aren't allowed on the property. Last I checked, violence isn't allowed either.
Property owners should have discretion over their property, but their property rights end where your right to life begins. If they do not want to assume responsibility for and protect you on your way to and from work, they should not be permitted to take away your ability to defend yourself during those times.
Check out other Gun Rights Examiners:
- Austin: Another Brady hallucination: More guns, more ‘gun violence’ (Part 1)
- Charlotte: Guns and the Constitution: A legislator finally 'gets it'
- DC: DC City Council enables residents’ easy access to mail order handgun carry permits!
- Denver: Active compliance......or not
- Los Angeles: Orange County Gun Control: Backing The Sheriff, or backing the people the sheriff works for?
- Milwaukee: Time to change our attitude about guns
- Minneapolis: Dispelling the myth of “The Wild West”
- National: A blast from the past
- St. Louis: The myth of the 'gun show loophole'
Comments
I have often wondered why if I go into a private business, slip, fall and hurt myself I can take legal action against the company.
But if something happens that involves a firearm, then all of a sudden the owners are not liable.
"While workplace violence is a very real issue, treating every gun owner as a potential mass murderer makes no more sense than treating everyone who has a prescription as a drug abuser. "-Daniel
Of course it never occurs to them to treat every gun owner as a potential life saver. Wonder why? One is just as easy to imagine as the other. Except we do have many cases where the second proposition has been proven to be true, without the bloodshed that would necessarily follow if all 80 to 100 million gun owners were to fall under the first proposition.
I believe the first proposition speaks more the the mental and emotional health of it holders, than it does to the "potential mass murderers" of their imaginations.
All they have to do is is remove the part of the law that takes away the liability of property owners when firearms are prohibited. When a person or business denies another person their right to self-defense and takes no action to protect that person by providing armed security to protect that person at all times, then they should be held liable for any loss or injury incured by that person.
So, since "personal rights" trump "property rights," does that mean that a private homeowner cannot "disarm" a guest who wants to carry a gun?
I'm sorry, but your argument is outrageous. You are attempting to elevate gun ownership over any other right, at the expense of other people's rights.
Just to further make a point, you have a "personal" right to exercise your religion and free speech, but that doesn't mean you have a right to pray loudly in the middle of a store, or give out political pamphlets.
"So, people are forced to choose between their lives and their livelihood, a decision they shouldn't have to make. "
As we see, most people go to work every day and never have their lives put at risk by not having a gun on them. Most people aren't forced to make that decision at all.
"While workplace violence is a very real issue"
You mean "While workplace violence is a very real issue, albeit one you are likely to never encounter..."
****
It's a great topic simply as a discussion of private vs. property rights but would have been a lot better without the rhetoric.
"While workplace violence is a very real issue, treating every gun owner as a potential mass murderer makes no more sense than treating everyone who has a prescription as a drug abuser"
Nor does it make sense to treat every day at work as a potential source of violence and murder.
what we need is a dont ask dont tell law. you dont have to have a firearm on you to create violence in the work place. anything you can get your hands on can be used as a weapon.
Wow dude that is amazing
RF
www.Privacy-Center.net
Wow, this website is totally dedicated to keeping a gun in everyone's hands. You guys make me sick and keep the rate of gun-violence and GSW's up in our great city... THANKS!
"treating every gun owner as a potential mass murderer makes no more sense than treating everyone who has a prescription as a drug abuser."
Actually, a gun has been proven to be an "aggressive stimulus" in social psychology, meaning that its mere presence makes it more likely that someone would act more aggressively than they normally would.
The 2nd Amendment was created to prevent the government from outlawing the ownership of personal arms that would allow citizens to rise up against a despotic government (as happened under British rule).
So I believe citizens should have the right to own any arms the military has access to (including assault rifles, machine guns, etc). However, I also believe a private business has every right to prohibit the presence of guns on its property. There is no reasonable situation where you having your gun at home instead of in your desk at work is going to be the deciding factor in an mass armed conflict. Also, the government is not doing this, it is other private citizens which the amendment does not address. Maybe it should have, but it doesn't.
The 2nd Amendment is concerned with the security of a free state; not the security of you as an individual. If we demand that liberals adhere to a strict interpretation of the 2nd Amendment we need to also be sure to follow the letter of amendment. By trying to expand/reinterpret the meaning we open it up to modern interpretations by others.
You know, every time I read an article like this, I have to wonder do any of you question WHY it is that in America you have the highest per capita Gun deaths/violent crime levels of ANY Western Nation? Could it perhaps be because you have so many thousands of guns available? and such liberal gun laws?
As to the posted comments of "why aren't they being treated as a potential LIFE SAVER"? That would be because there is not a single shred of evidence that carrying a firearm in ANY way makes you or the people around you safer. In fact there is ample evidence that having a large percentage of your populace armed actually INCREASES violence, especially among younger age groups who don't have a fear/understanding of consequences. especially since such a large percentage of owned firearms are handguns (which serve exactly what purpose aside from killing people?)
so many people are killed: 29,573 in 2001 alone!! and the trends show that gun deaths OVERTOOK every other form of death in your country. you were number 1 in gun deaths IN FRONT OF BRAZIL AND MEXICO in 2003. How can any of you look at this sort of information and conclude that MORE guns is the way to go?
In conclusion, you people need to get over your paranoia. it's killing you, literally.
while we might be higher than most countries in the western world for gun related deaths... we are significantly lower in machete related deaths. People will kill other people with what ever they can find... so lets get down to brass tacks here...
Guns are tools that defend liberty and freedom. Granting every human no matter how small in stature a chance to defend him or hers self, family or personal property. Those who wish to control this wish to control your freedom... Period.
Maybe one day when the world becomes a civilised place we will no longer need this to be true, but for now man is only an few steps out of that primordial forest and needs a active deterrent to prevent him from acting like a wanker.
I am the son of a Ukrainian Jew who's father not only survived the atrocities of Hitler, but also that of Stalin. When my father came to this country one of the first things he did was to buy a pistol. As a child he would show me how to use this tool, and remind me that if the peoples of his country had more of these (holding his colt .41 long high in the air) Many would be free and living today.
So for every child that guns down a class room full of fellow class mates, for every co-worker that looses his/her marbles and guns down the person in the cubical next to them... that is the price we shall have to pay in order to keep freedom possible. We can't prevent the errant misuse of this tool, but this tool can prevent the misuse of absolute power... and that is a price I am willing to pay.
While the actual laws vary by state, the issue is actually much easier when you take the emotion out of it by making it property rights vs. property rights:
Your (or my) property rights end where my (your) clothes begin. You may lawfully (ethically, morally) bar anyone from your property but you may not specify what if any underwear your customers have UNDER their clothes -- especially when that underwear is legal.
Once we realize that my property begins at my clothes, the confusion ends -- when we had the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the US and almost every state the weight is strongly in favor of public businesses being required to either admit or deny PEOPLE, not specify what legal items they wear.
I am in agreement 100%. Christmas 2006 I had been out shopping and as always I was carrying. I had a Christmas packages to ship and so I went to the local FedEx store, loaded with several packages I approached the door, I attempted to open the door with my index finger, being that my arms were full, when I noticed the "no carry" sign. I immediately stopped and set my packages down outside the door. I knew that I was unable to enter, so I requested that the lady behind the desk come to assist me, when she came near the door I stated my issue saying that I was unable to enter because I was a CCW holder and their sign was preventing me from coming inside. She said that it was company policy and that I would have to come back when I wasn't carrying. Was I upset, you bet, was I a criminal, no, I obeyed the sign and stopped before entering. But she refused my business. I wrote to FedEx corporate twice and received no answer. I now do business at The UPS Store because they support my right to carry.
A businessman does not control that which is carried by people in a helicopter over his airspace. So a simple compromise is to say that his property ends where the inside of a person's automobile begins. No one is forcing him to offer parking to employees, but if he does, then he should respect the privacy of their automobiles.
I imagine you've heard by now that the Oklahoma parking lot gun law was upheld--can't wait to hear Paul Helmke's anguished bleating.
www.newsok.com/court-allows-oklahoma-workers-to-have-guns-in-vehicles/article/3346987
Azrael, almost everything you wrote is false. I do not know if you are lying on purpose of if you are so illogically emotional on the subject that you are lying without realizing it. But telling falsehoods, you are.\\
We don't actually have the highest rate of gun deaths, especially if you remove the police initiated shootings, which would not be trimmed by any gun control measure anyway. Look at the rates for Australia and Great Britain, they have soared since disarmament. In our own country to places with the highest rate of gun death are the places with the absolutely most strict prohibitions against even owning guns. Sort of works against your theme, there doesn't it?
Even if what you had posited were true, it is not a true reflection of the issue. The true comparison would be the amount of violent crime and its rate in the various populations. In every case, the amount of violent crime is higher by orders of magnitude in the those locales with the strictest gun control. For instance, England is now the most violent society on earth among first world nations. Just since the gun bans have they achieved that dubious distinction. Studies by both the EU and the UN verify this, neither of which are fans of America nor the right to arms for ordinary citizens. Explain that away.\
Further you claim that there is not a shred of evidence of guns making anyone safer, yet there have been studies completed that show as many as 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year in our country that resulted in no shots being fired because the aggressor did not wish to continue his pursuit when faced with an armed citizen. So you see, not only is an armed society safer for the citizen it appears that it may be safer for the criminal.
You said,"so many people are killed: 29,573 in 2001 alone!! and the trends show that gun deaths OVERTOOK every other form of death in your country. you were number 1 in gun deaths IN FRONT OF BRAZIL AND MEXICO in 2003."
Now that is a brazen lie, and you had to know it was. So tell us exactly why anyone should listen to you regarding anything when you deny integrity to further a hysterical emotional phobia.
Straightarrow, where are you finding your figures on the "soaring" rates of gun deaths by shooting in Australian and the UK since disarmament, straightarrow? Here in Australia, they've more than halved in the years since 1996, actually. It's fallen to a 20-year low in Britain - 42 gun-related deaths last year.
I suppose, to use your own words, that such fact-checking would sort of work against *your* theme...
Gun-owners as potential lifesavers - really? How often could that 'potentially' happen, I wonder, compared with how often the very opposite?
Perhaps get your own facts right, lest your posts seem like hysterical, emotional outbursts that cite utterly false information.
StraightArrow: Actually not a single thing I wrote was a lie. In fact I would say, based on your responses, that you are woefully undereducated about the realities of this situation. Either that or you are blinded by your ideaologie into a knee jerk reaction.
There is not a single credible study (and by "credible" I mean NOT paid for by the NRA)ever conducted in any country in the world showing that an armed populace reduces crime, mainly because in order to HAVE an armed populace you must have a large number of available weapons. It is inevitable that a large percentage of these weapons will end up on the street for criminal purposes.
And even worse the idiotic ease with which to gain access to firearms in your country is DIRECTLY responsible for a flood of illegal hand guns into MY country Canada.
Now we have a lot of guns here in Canada. almost more guns than people to tell the truth. HOWEVER it is illegal to EVER carry a weapon on you concealed or otherwise. It is almost impossible to purchase a handgun. and you know what? our gun death statistics reflect it.
Google Gun deaths U.s Or Gun deaths Worldwide in order to locate the per capita deaths by guns. (2005 being the last year available) You guys are number #1 by a large margin. Sorry man, but you are just plain wrong.
I can't get our attorney general to respond to my question, so maybe you will know the answer.
On the signs that are posted no guns allowed.... it states "no firearms allowed unless other wise authorized by law" since the state of Ohio issued and authorized my conceal carry permit doesn't that make those who have a permit exempt from not being able to cary in these places? I understand that there are some places you cannot carry and I am comfortable with that.
After reading some of these comments, I wonder where the common sense has gone. Those who have been in places where conceaaled carry is the rule rather than the exception would know that the likelyhood of violence, and even near-violence is less because people are less likely to "start" with some one who might be armed. Even the small and weak are viewed as potentialy formidable, because you just never know.
I won't get so much into the debate on property rights vs. gun rights because some areas can indeed be fuzzy on this question. I will say this however,....if you insist on carrying a gun on your person, you automatically forfeit the right to make a mistake with the gun. If you can't live with that responsibility, then don't carry the gun.
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