Your property rights end at the surface of my clothes, just as my property rights end at the surface of your clothes. Would I forbid you to come onto my property, assuming I sent out an open invitation otherwise, if you had a pacemaker or an artificial hip? Of course not! Those things are technological enhancements for imperfect human bodies. That is all a gun is. Humans don't have the fangs, claws, or a protective shell for self defense that many other animals have. Most of us do not have the opportunity to become experts at unarmed combat, either. Instead we have a brain that lets us devise tools to make up for that deficiency. To make a rule that a person coming onto your property must leave part of his body behind is crazy and wrong.
A reasonable approach is to forbid certain behaviors: no attacks allowed. And if you break this rule, the other people around you, suitably armed, will stop the attack. The alternative is to encourage massacres like Columbine, Binghamton, and Virginia Tech.
There is much disagreement on this issue among gun owners, and mine is the minority position. That doesn't necessarily mean I am wrong. Here is my train of thought:
Rights don't overlap; two people can't have an equal claim over the same property. No matter where you go, there is a "you-shaped" bubble of your property, with all its rights intact, encasing you. In a free society, absent coercive government, you have absolute rights to your property. If you choose to allow other people to come onto your property (such as for business purposes or private visitation) you are accepting the other people as they are, within their "bubble". Your property rights do not penetrate this bubble around them, just as their property rights don't extend beyond that bubble while they are your guest (unless they brought some other property with them, such as a purse or a jacket). Your only reasonable caveat is that they are expected to behave in certain ways. For instance, not attack other guests/customers nor their host; not steal; and they may be expected to be polite (depending on the circumstances). However, what is inside their clothing is not your business as long as it remains there. Contagions and radiation, and in some cases odors, are things that are reasonable violations of this expectation. Anything else and you are violating the property rights of your invited guests and endangering innocent lives.
You are also assuming responsibility for the safety of your guests or customers if you forbid self-defense. If you fail, you are almost as guilty as the attacker. That, however, is an issue for another time.
Comments
Kent,
I disagree.
If I own a business(and certainly my home), then I either own it, or I do not. While you mention pace-makers, etc, and I see the correlation, but it only serves to prove the point. If for some reason I choose to not permit pacemakers in my home, or my business or other property-that is my right, if I am actually the owner. It may be irrational, or even foolish, but it is justified, and should not be interfered with by outside force. Pace-maker users could simply go elsewhere. Otherwise you are enacting a positive right-since pace-maker users will be able to enter my "property" without my consent-implying governmental action.
I love guns, and honestly think everyone should be armed in some way at ALL times, but if I tell you not to bring-anything, guns, drugs, pace-makers, pornography, cotton-candy, baked beans, or Alanis Morisette recordings into my home or place of business, you should respect that. And if you do not, and I discover it, I'm free to expel you....Isn't that freedom? At least with property rights?
Are you suggesting that a bar owner does not have the right to check patrons for weapons as they come in? This is, after all, voluntary and the bar owner really does have a responsibility to provide security to patrons, both as a business advantage, and as a historical, common law, tort liability.
I get what you are saying, but I think you've veered from principle a bit. While I'd not ban guns in my home or business, it is none of my business what you do in yours.
I'm not necessarily as big on "property" as a lot of libertarians are, but this seems key. How'm I wrong?
A couple of points. First "Providing security" is not served by prohibiting weapons; just the opposite. Bad people will ALWAYS find a way to cause harm, leaving the good people at a disadvantage when immorally stripped of their defensive weapons. I think every "gun-free zone" which then is the scene of a massacre, enabled by its anti-defensive policies, should be sued into the ground and the people who made the policy held personally liable.
Second, If you do not wish to accept people on your property, along with their own little bubble of property rights, you have no obligation to do so. If you claim to be willing to have people come onto your property, but refuse to recognize that they have a right to their own personal space/property and the privacy thereof, you are defrauding people. What is inside their clothing is none of your business, unless it "leaks" out and makes an appearance. Now, if they make it your business and you have an issue with it, then you are totally within your rights to ask them to leave, and make them do so if they refuse.
This is an issue of "privacy". No one has a right (or the authority) to search anyone for weapons or anything else. If you wish to stand outside your door and say "you may enter; you may not" then you may be a racist or some other type of bigot, but that is also within your rights. You are basing your bigotry or dislike upon what you see, or what you imagine. There is a fine line, and a slippery slope, between saying I have a right to frisk everyone (physically or electronically) who enters my property, even though I pretended to offer an open invitation, and using those airport scanners which basically show the travellers' naked bodies to the "screeners". That is simply wrong.
No one ever thought of prohibiting weapons until government gave them the OK and set the example.
I've had this discussion before. It is a sort of chicken and egg deal. The bottom line, for me, is that I have the right to include/exclude anyone from my property, for any reason or for no reason.
If they choose to come onto my property, it must be under my terms. If they don't like those terms, they must go somewhere else.
Say I have instructed people coming into my home that - whatever - is not welcome and they agree to that limitation to my invitation by coming in. Then, if they bring it in anyway, hidden somewhere on their body, I would be within my rights to ask them to leave if that item was revealed at any point.
I agree that I would have no right to search them for these items, and would have to rely on their integrity. And I would certainly not appeal to government to enforce it for me.
But I reject the idea that I would somehow be responsible for the consequences if they chose to abide by my requirements and later needed the item not welcome in my home. They made their own choice to abandon the item when they decided to enter. They were not compelled to enter my property.
None of us would likely make such a restriction for guns or much else, and would be much more apt to exclude only a known or obvious troublemaker.
But, we demand absolute recognition of all our rights. We cannot deny the equal rights of anyone else and remain congruent, even if we disagree with them completely.
This would not likely BE a problem among truly free people, and it is only the intrusion of government "laws" that make it any sort of dilemma.
Wouldn't this boil down to there being no "right to bear arms" in practice in the real world we live in today? You don't have the realistic option of arming and disarming yourself multiple times as you go about your peaceable business throughout the course of your day - especially since parking lots of many anti-defensive businesses would also be off-limits. I see the difficulty here- property rights should be absolute - but maybe since I would never dream of forbidding a person to bring anything onto my property that didn't threaten me in any way I just can't even imagine the other side. And there is no way anyone's property rights extend to control over my property as long as I am not initiating force on them in any way. "Potential to cause harm" is what the state uses against us. Haven't we already established that this is a ridiculous concept?
Kent,
I think you're over complicating this. On the property rights issue, let's leave businesses out of it for a moment since LAWS in the south have forever made that a charged subject. Homes instead. While you certainly may, by deception, violate whatever conditions I might set-and if you let that violation "leak" out I can remove you from my home(forcibly if necessary-since you are at that point a trespasser, a type of aggression). Doing something deliberately against the wishes of a property owner would not be something I would find endearing, were I the owner.
This is how I understand things to be in Ohio(I don't have a permission slip.....) a business(or home I suppose) can put up a sign saying no weapons-and if you violate it you might be on the hook for a trespassing charge-not a firearms charge. While I don't really agree with the idea of a "charge" here, it is the only way in our "society" to compel someone to leave your property. The motto here seems to be, don't let them see it-a good idea all around. A lot of the gun rights people would like to see that change-a position I find inexplicable.
Deciding what security a business requires, and will find most effective, should be decided by the people running the business, should it not? Personally, I agree with you, I don't think searching people, or banning weapons makes much sense, but it is not MY decision. Nor is it, or should it be, yours.
I've never searched people, and I refuse to patronize places who do-but they have every right to impose that condition on entry-no matter how foolish-just don't go. What's the other alternative? How do you plan on stopping them?
I should have been more clear earlier, current law muddles this issue dramatically, since in most places(in Ohio, I know, but I think it is common), it is a felony crime to possess a firearm in a bar-meaning that the deck is skewed, and the likelihood of an armed person also intending "bad" things of some sort is higher due to the law. Business owners can only really respond to the law.
As far as this making a de facto overall carry ban-I really don't think so. I don't see too many of those "no weapons" signs around, to be honest. It's one of the reasons I've started to wonder about private property "rights" in general, however.
I guess I just don't see it. If I see a man or a woman, I assume they have gender-specific genitalia hidden from sight. That obvioulsy isn't always the case, but it is a safe assumption. It is the same with self-defensive weapons. If I see people who appear to be responsible, I assume they are. It seems insane to "assume sheep-hood" instead, and evil to request or require it. If you don't want responsible, self-defense capable people on your property, don't invite anyone on. Otherwise assume "liberty". The mentally healthy shouldn't be penalized and forced to live in the shadows to coddle the maladjusted among us.
But, if someone makes an issue, I don't go on their property if they let it be known ahead of time that they require me to die for their hoplophobia. If I don't know ahead of time, I don't feel guilty.
I agree with Kent, My Body and the surrounding few inches or so belong to me, it doesnt matter where I am. As long as I keep my claws (weapons) hidden, what business is it of anyone else?
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