guns-in-parking-lots bill: Florida SB206

WPEC NEWS 12 - The 1•2 Turn To

After two hours of surfing the net, I've found NO other reference which suggests progress in Florida's Senate Bill 206 which would not only allow employes to keep firearms in their cars at their workplace, but would also allow prosecution of employers who forbid this expression of the Second Amendment.

Still, the Channel 12 CBS affiliate in West Palm Beach, Florida has announced that the bill did "inch (sic) forward today."

The fact that I was unable to find supporting news releases tonight MAY be because the news was so recently released. Or it may be that the Main Stream Media (MSM) didn't usually consider it a news-worthy item. Or, to exercise my Geekish Paranoia-bone, it may be that the news is being suppressed, or Channel 12 may have got it wrong and it's all a cruel hoax designed solely to build my RKBA hopes up only to crush my spirits in the morning.

Here's the full text of the announcement:

Compromise on Weapons Bill
Written By : Melissa Dart
April 5, 2006 - 12:02AM

A bill to let gun owners bring their guns to work and keep them locked in their cars inch forward today.

It took six tries for lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee to move the bill past its first committee.

In the end, they agreed gun owners can keep their weapons locked in their cars at work, unless businesses show a compelling safety concern to ban the practice.

Companies that might be exempted would include security outfits and hazardous waste companies.

Companies that might be exempted would include security outfits and hazardous waste companies.

The law could also would allow companies to ban employees from bringing a weapon who have a history of violence or problems with the company and businesses also wouldn't be responsible for any crimes the individuals committed with the guns.

The National Rifle Association's Marion Hammer says she can live with the new bill.

The handgun-toting grandmother told legislators that voters' gun rights don't end when they drive into parkinglots.

On the other hand business representatives maintain property owners have the
right to set the rules for those entering their turf.

I made my prediction on February 9, 2006, that this bill was a pipe dream. I expected (in my usual droll, optimistic manner) that this was a foregone conclusion. The NRA is lacking in leadership, they're indulging in wishful thinking when they think they can take on major corporate employers (eg: ConocoPhillips) and win, and that the best they could hope for was a 'good fight' and they might elicit some (insufficient) support from new Supremes Roberts and Phillips. My expectation was that the NRA was forcing a fight they knew they couldn't win, but were expecting this battle to be a precursor to something bigger -- such as a challenge to previous court decisions restricting RKBA such as Emerson and Silviera and even Miller et al.

This may be considered 'progress' by those of us who consider RKBA rights should take precedence over property rights. I count myself among them, and for good cause: Luby's, a school assault where a teacher ran out to his car and grabbed his gun to help disarm the murderer (I'll look up the reference later and include the URL in an update), and any wolf-among-sheep reference you can think of. But the most important thing is that there is, in my personal opinion, no reason why your boss should decide (a) when you should have access to a defensive firearm, and (b) whether you should be able to put your range gear in your car in the morning, so you can run out to the range and practice after work.

Your friends and co-workers may freak out if you show up open-carrying, and I don't blame them that much. They don't know you well enough to trust that you aren't about to go postal on them. Still, when AOL (for example) fires employees because they take off their carry-gun when they get to the parking lot and leave it in the car, it seems as if paranoia has become the new ruler of your life in America.

It happens. It isn't right, unless you're a firm believer that everyone who has a firearm is a massacre just waiting to happen. Still, it's The Golden Rule: "He Who Has the Gold, Makes The Rules."

I still don't believe that it may become the law of the land that employers are constrained from preventing employees keeping guns in their cars, but I would be delighted if it happens. In this time of terrorist strikes and "Hate America" thinking, that two-minute run to your car could conceivably be the difference between life and death for dozens of innocents when someone breaks the existing laws and starts shooting up your workplace.

Does this sound paranoid? Perhaps, but it HAS happened and continues to happen from time to time.

While honest citizens are prevented by current law from defending themselves, criminals are, by definition, not constrained by law.

SCHOOLS:
Schools are a special case. We all want to protect our children, and it seem so reasonable to expect that if we pass laws against allowing people to carry guns on school grounds, it ought to protect the children.

At least, it seem that was as long as we assumed that people were universally civilized. Until Columbine, and Jonesboro, and Red Lake, and Beslan.

Laws don't protect schools, and they don't protect children. We wish it were otherwise, but our national and global experience proves that wishful thinking doesn't protect anybody.


John Lott believes, for example, that teachers should be allowed to be armed. Why? Think "Columbine". Think about the previous paragraphs.

Workplaces ... are different. And yet the same. We never know what is going to happen, or where it is going to happen. All we know is that the worst COULD happen, at the worst possible place and time

And so the Florida is placed in the uncomfortable position of once again being he frontiersman, who takes the arrow for the rest of us while the legislature has many other concerns with which to deal.

We wish them good luck.