TexasCHLforum.com

Obviously, I think the employer rules are complete bull. However, to play devil's advocate - if there is a workplace shooting that occurs because an employee breaks the rules, the company is in the clear (according to the lawyers). If you are an employee and you get hurt and argue that you were prevented from armed self-defense - the lawyers argue that the company is not responsible for the acts of criminals and they are not liable. That seems to be the doctrine in the law articles.

There hasn't been to my knowledge a successful suit for not being able to carry and then getting hurt in a crime or rampage. The suits after such are usually because the perpetrator should have been known to be violent and removed or during a rampage, response was inadequate. Virginia Tech is a good instance of such.

I've been told by work place lawyers that they regard the financial risk of the legal gun owner going nuts or shooting an innocent in a rampage outweighs the financial risk of paying off victims.

Since companies and schools only care about the corporate health or institutional health and not much about YOUR health, I've supported the idea than employers, etc. have no right to control your behavior or carry privileges. No king of the castle or parking lot for me. Unless, there is technical reason to ban carry - ex. - no guns by the MRI as they can drag you in or discharge by the magnetic field - the JOB KING-EMPEROR is an inappropriate model.

But if you search legal journals, you will find several law review articles that suggest the company will be liable for actions of their employees with guns (carried legally or in the car) or customers allowed to carry guns.

They even suggest that legislation limiting liability may not hold.

So the liability issue is out there as more than street wisdom.

Yeah, right. I started the thread to discuss the implementation of policy issue and not rehash the theoretical private property debate.

Keeping on topic makes for good discussions. Simple concept. If you don't agree and want to replay the opposition to the parking lot bill based on being king of the parking lot, go ahead.

I was looking to a specific answer and will tune out beating the dead horse. Of course, the bill has to be signed and come into action or the dead horse will rise zombie like. I guess that would be OK with you. Ride that horse around the parking lot and make sure the employees show proper respect.

Then you know the issues. No reason to replay them and divert from the topic at hand.

The issue isn't the theory of private property but legalisms that might result from the interaction of the law and attempts to circumvent it with some handbook language, perhaps demanding searches.

We've done the employer is king of his employees and his parking lot ad nauseum. Go find and re-read those debates.

BTW, that 5 th circuit decision in OK speaks to the issue quite well. I'm glad so many employers care for the welfare of their employees as compared to their supposed financial risk.

BTW, Rice just hired three prominent UC cancer scholars. Guess they weren't worried.

The folks threatening not to teach were a fringe group. I asked around and no one I knew, esp. young profs, would give up a good tenure track position over this. Nor would older tenure types as getting another job unless you are a superstar is almost impossible nowadays.

Thus, that blather isn't the operative factor. The ideology is or was fun posturing. When push comes to shove, I'd bet they go for the bottom line of liability risk. If firing employees is more of a risk, they will spout their opposition righteously and not do much.

Since they can't easily remove the faculty and there are gun friendly ones, firing a staff member would be extremely discriminative and they wouldn't want that mess.

Last, there are surprisingly folks to the left/liberal end of the spectrum who support gun rights. How about that? Some are even more vocal than their conservative colleagues (and how do I know that?).

GEM

Having read liability and crisis management literature aimed at universities, I would disagree respectfully as they are also truly concerned with liability.Thus I think your analysis holds for them. While on the surface the faculties are seen as not gun friendly, financial officers are more concerned with the bucks and wouldn't want to start a giant lawsuit.

In fact, schools' inaction in case of the warning signs from rampagers can be traced back to liability concerns. If they wouldn't act strongly against obviously disturbed folks suggests that they wouldn't be hot to go after law abiding folks with clean records.

TX is also a conservative state and the resultant PR flap might not be good for fund raising.

But we will see.

Great find but we are in the 5th Circuit. However, precedents count. The article seems to knock the socks off the private property ranters that we've seen here.

Can the TX AG speak to the issue as was done previously on other parking lot interpretations?

Also for faculty (harking back to college issues) - at least for tenured faculty (and those on the tenure track), firing at will isn't possible unless there is great moral or legal violations. This would not be such reason, it would seem.

A question. Congrats on the parking lot win. But I reading around the internet (obviously the source of all truth! ) that employers can rewrite their handbooks to make not having a gun in the car a condition of employment.

So is this legal under the legislation? If so, it would make the bill not applicable to many firms who have such rules or add them.

Hope not and sorry to be a touch confused. Have to stop reading the Internets and using the Google.