The National Rifle Association, breaking with its usual pro-freedom stance, favors the enactment of state laws of this sort. But they’re a really, really bad idea. (Prof. Bainbridge, Nov. 15).
Laws requiring employers to tolerate guns
The National Rifle Association, breaking with its usual pro-freedom stance, favors the enactment of state laws of this sort. But they’re a really, really bad idea. (Prof. Bainbridge, Nov. 15).
6 Comments
I’d say they’re not at all abandoning their pro-freedom chance by advocating that people should be free to carry their legally owned weapons with them to their place of employment.
If a law is needed to protect employers from liability in case weapons on their promises are used and people get hurt then so be it (though tort reform to prevent such lawsuits would be preferable it’s less likely to happen).
I’m not sure I agree; if the gun was properly stored in my vehicle, that’s rather different from having a pistol on my hip as I walk through the front door.
I guess this comes down to *why* the employer wants to ban guns from their parking lots – I can’t imaging the employer would have cared if they weren’t worried about liability issues
I know that in Louisiana (where I live) your personal auto is considered an extension of your home. It is perfectly legal to carry a loaded, unsecured firearm in the car – in the glovebox, console, under the seat, etc. – just as it would be in your home.
I don’t know, however, how that would reconcile when your ‘extension to your home’ is then parked temporarily in your employer’s lot.
I find it to be a much less bad idea than many other things that have already been done (regulations on who you can hire/fire, etc).
Example: Redneck Rob the Racist dislikes being in the presence of non-white people. He owns a business. Basically, he is not allowed to just hire white people.
That same logic can be applied to gender, etc. I think that those regulations are far worse than this one would be.
(I’m not actually convinced that this is a bad idea – the Bainbridge post you mentioned has several significant problems that make it very unpersuasive.)
MaybeI am missing something here , but for the life of me I just can not see why you would need to bring your gun to work with you . And isn`t company property just that ? If your employer owns the property I would certainly think that they have the right to decide if an employee can bring a weapon to work with them , (which just sounds like a very bad idea to me in the first place),
and keep it on company property.
It may be that the gun isn’t needed at work as much as it’s needed before and after.
The question here is about guns locked in car trunks, not in your desk drawer.
My overall view of the law would probably depend on what employers actually think of the combination of the statutory right and employer immunity.