So, Floridians are now allowed to keep guns in their car at work, regardless of the workplace policy, if they have a concealed weapons permit.
My question is about the lawsuit that the businesses are filing. What basis would they have for this “private property” issue?
Literally thousands of laws have been passed regarding what businesses can and can’t do with regards to their employees or the general public. What would make this law different from those?
The same applies here in Minnesota. Not only that, but it allows you to have your gun in your car on a college campus and is specifically written to strike down any rules by the college to not allow this.
We got into this on my last job working Security for a local college. A student was seen in his car wearing a gun at night. He was getting out of his vehicle and was clearly preparing to put the gun in a lock box and then go to his law school class. But two panicky female students saw it and ran straight to us. My boss called the police, who came and said “There’s no crime here, we’re gone”. My management was in a tither about the whole issue, despite me sending them the relevant bits of the written law. My retired cop Asst. Director even said “I don’t care what the law says, that’s University Property!” (Well good luck with that one, sunshine!)
The reasoning is that parking lots are “public access” areas. Unless you have gates and security and all that, anyone could be in those areas for just about any reason. Someone with a concealed carry permit has to be able to store their weapon in their vehicle when they leave it to enter the property.
Don’t forget that ‘concealed carry’ doesn’t necessarily mean Joe Blow is carrying for no reason and has no reason to have a weapon. Joe could be an undercover or off-duty Law Enforcement Officer, a private detective or have any number of legitimate reasons to carry.
I find the tither to be tathetic.
Crickets chirping
(Wow, that didnt even amount to be a joke. I have no idea where it was going.)
I’m a litt confused by some business’ responses to this, though. Oh, wow, someone has a gun - in their car! dun Dun DUUUUUNNNN! Won’t anyone think of the CHILDREN?!?!
I mean, if someone is actually going to freak out and become the next crazy daykiller, do they really think that a law which sayeth, “thou mayest not haveth thyeth shootin’ iron inneth th careth” will help?
Unfortunately, that seems to be the logic of the “there aught to be a law” crowd. Whether it be drugs, prostitution, speeding or the color of the paint on your house, far too many people think “Law = End of Problem”.
Back on OP, I actually understand both sides of the argument. People who own the property think “That’s my property, I should be able to control it”, while on the other side, it is a parking area, and thus it is Public Access. It makes it much more difficult to legally carry your weapon if you can’t park at the location you are visiting because you can’t have your weapon in your vehicle. It also gets into the whole grey area of “whose property is it” when it’s my vehicle (my property) in your parking lot (your property); and involves a number of privacy and search issues.
I wouldn’t want to run a bar and have my help carrying in their cars.
I bet more gun murders are committed in a moment of passion than deliberately planned out. No, I don’t think a policy preventing employees from bringing guns to work will stop the crazy plan-it-out killers, but it might stop some of the moment of passion ones.
I don’t know about that. Such a policy is effectively impossible to enforce, unless you regularly demand that your employees open their trunk while security guards turn out the insides. I doubt that anybody who carries, much less the sort of emotionally unstable person who might commit murder in a “moment of passion,” would be deterred by a boss who doesn’t want a gun in the trunk of a car in his parking lot.
Because they should be carrying on their person?
The Emotional arguments against concealed carry are always:
1> the “Crime of Passion” bit and;
2> the “Wild West”/Scared Of People With Guns bit.
But time after time, statistics have shown that CCW permit holders are far more stable and law abiding than the general population. We don’t commit crimes. There hasn’t been a single case of a CCW permit holder pulling out their gun and going on a rampage - anywhere at any time. Despite constant predictions of doom and gloom from the fearful anti-gun crowd.
On my side of things, I always think that these kinds of arguments say far more about the person who makes them; if they are so terrified of themselves and other people that they believe that the mere possession of a gun can turn anyone into a savage murderer at the drop of a hat. What a horrible way to go through life!
I believe the rules for getting a CCW are quite stringent. I wonder what the ratio is of people who apply vs people who get one?
It’s the law abiding citizens that will go to the trouble of applying for a CCW in the first place. I don’t think you’re going to find the people intent on shooting up a workplace bothering with an application form.
Chimera, to your point, I remember an incident that happened at Wal-mart…a shoplifter was actually stabbing a cashier with a knife, and a customer pulled a gun out of her purse and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. Another customer was shocked…SHOCKED, I TELL YOU, that the customer had a gun in her purse!
Many states are now “shall issue” states where unless the government can provide a reason to deny you a concealed weapons permit, if you jump through the hoops (training course, clean background check, etc.) you get one. Authorities have no discretion over who gets the CCW and who doesn’t.
Some States like Kansas post stats on this - it even has a detailed breakdown of exactly why they were denied: http://www.ksag.org/files/shared/CC.AnnualReport.07.pdf
However, note that this is biased strongly - folks that made it to this point have already self-selected by not applying knowing that they’re ineligible (Kansas doesn’t even allow you to be in contempt for child support payments and carry…which is good, of course).
You can find similar stats elsewhere. Texas also posts a “crime conviction rate” for CCW and non-CCW holders (the ratio is about 0.16-0.2 IIRC, meaning that a CCW holder in Texas is only 16-20% as likely to commit a crime as the average person). The arguments against CCW are emotional and people still don’t have a good answer for the question “how does disallowing CCW stop a criminal who intends to break the law anyhow?”
There have been some good points about the Florida law - Kansas went through a recent modification of the law for a similar reason. Imagine these scenarios:
A store in a strip mall shares a common parking lot with other stores. This store says “no guns allowed” and claims that since they share rental of the parking lot, their policy applies to the entire lot. They could also claim that it applies only to certain spots directly outside of the store. If other stores in there don’t mind CCW holders, then they could claim they have part of the lot. Now, what if the owner of the lot has a third opinion? This is something that actually rose as a dispute in Kansas - if you’re the cop on the scene, how do you work that one out?
You’re in a carpool and you carry to work with your employer’s approval. 2 of the 3 folks you ride with work at places prohibiting possession in the parking lot. No more car pool, or no more carry - and again, you might not even know it until it’s too late.
My office is served by a city bus that comes onto the parking lot. Let’s say you’re a person out going shopping, minding their own business, and the bus pulls into the lot which is posted (but only on the door, far away where you can’t even see it) that no CCW are allowed. Guess what - you’re now a criminal.
And what’s a parking lot, anyhow? If a street passes through or between a parking lot as a right-of-way to another building, is that part of the street part of it? My company said “yes it is.”
In each of the four real scenarios above (real as in they were presented to the Kansas DA as problems with the first version of the law), you can become an insta-criminal through entirely innocent acts. Especially since before the lots were not required to be posted, only the buildings. So you couldn’t even know you were in violation of the law until you had already violated it.
I would be too. A purse is a terrible place to keep a gun. Too easy to separate you from your purse, and therefore from your gun.
As an aside:
When there was a shooting at the Loews/AMC Waterfront in Pittsburgh during the movie Get Rich or Die Trying, the movie theater decided that the appropriate response to this would be to put up signs that have a gun in a ‘NO’ circle.
Because such signs will really be effective against the street thugs from Homestead, Hazelwood and Wilkinsburg who show up to cause trouble, and who are already illegally possessing and carrying firearms.