TexasCHLforum.com

bdickens wrote:I'll tell you what I learned in this thread. I learned why so little progress has been made on protecting the Second Amendment. We're all fighting among ourselves over property rights instead of fighting our common enemy.

The founding fathers were very concerned about property rights. When the constitution was written, only property owners had the right to vote.

As much as I would like to see every business allow us to carry, we have to remember that property owners have rights to what they can do with their property. I respect that right. I also expect them to respect my right to take my business elsewhere. I dont have my plastic yet, but I find myself looking for 30.06 whenever I go to any business. I figure its a good habit to develop. It also gives me time to find another business to spend my hard earned money in.

Communists have no ownership of property. Socialists have restrictions on property rights. Which should we choose while we are calling for these laws that strip us all of our right to control our own businesses or houses or land. It is a dangerous road we go down when we demand our rights over the rights of others. Our right to control who enters our house are tied to those that protect the business owners right to restrict CHL. I will not support the destruction of that right just so I don't have to drive a few blocks to do my banking.

Anytime one forces, by law, their rights to be unjustly held over another, we all lose freedom. To do so, for convince, is the worst sort of tyranny.

shootthesheet wrote:Communists have no ownership of property. Socialists have restrictions on property rights. Which should we choose while we are calling for these laws that strip us all of our right to control our own businesses or houses or land. It is a dangerous road we go down when we demand our rights over the rights of others. Our right to control who enters our house are tied to those that protect the business owners right to restrict CHL. I will not support the destruction of that right just so I don't have to drive a few blocks to do my banking.

Anytime one forces, by law, their rights to be unjustly held over another, we all lose freedom. To do so, for convince, is the worst sort of tyranny.

Very well said.

AEA wrote:I think it is more important for us to try to get the State to eliminate the confusion for us with regards to the inappropriate/incorrect posting of certain locations such as City Properties, etc.......

If we can get this accomplished, then we can have a better (clearer) idea of the places that we can choose not to attend.

I am all for choice, but I do not want confusion. You say it and say it right, I go somewhere else. Simple........

The only way to do that would be to make the improper, therefore un-enforcable posting of 30.06, illegal...A fine, imprisonment etc etc...

There is nothing like that now, and it would be unlikely it would gain traction in some piece of legislation either...I do not know of any State Rep or Senator that would carry a bill like this...

jimlongley wrote:I am sitting here envisioning the uproar ensuing if I owned a business and posted:

NO CELL PHONES, PDAS, OR OTHER SIMILAR ELECTRONIC DEVICES ALLOWED

All persons caught in possession of such devices on this premises without the owner's specific permission will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law per section 30.05 of the Texas Penal Code

Or some such thing - I'll bet it would make the evening news on four networks and TXscan.

OTOH, I could also post "NO NON-CHLs ALLOWED, be prepared to show ID."

I wonder how those would work.

There already is one like this in polling places on election day...Maybe not in reference to 30.05, but it is the law here in Texas...

I suppose that's a logical conclusion of the property rights argument. If a business can ban a customer with a CHL from carrying a handgun, it follows that they can ban a customer with a â„ž from having drugs on the property. Same thing with firing employees for having legal guns or drugs if the policy is in the employee handbook.

pt145ss wrote:

aardwolf wrote:Would it be allowed for a business owner to prohibit customers from wearing shirts. Not "profane" shirts but any clothing above the waist.

Sure...it's called a nudist camp. Its a business as they make money and most have strict policies about not wearing any clothes.

Plus it would be hard to conceal, as it is illegal to open carry in Texas...

Uh ohhhhh, did I just say that???

stevie_d_64 wrote:

AEA wrote:I think it is more important for us to try to get the State to eliminate the confusion for us with regards to the inappropriate/incorrect posting of certain locations such as City Properties, etc.......

If we can get this accomplished, then we can have a better (clearer) idea of the places that we can choose not to attend.

I am all for choice, but I do not want confusion. You say it and say it right, I go somewhere else. Simple........

The only way to do that would be to make the improper, therefore un-enforcable posting of 30.06, illegal...A fine, imprisonment etc etc...

There is nothing like that now, and it would be unlikely it would gain traction in some piece of legislation either...I do not know of any State Rep or Senator that would carry a bill like this...

I do not know about this. My gut says that if a 51% bar can be fined for not properly posting the 51% sign (I believe it is finable...not sure though) then its not a huge jump to argue that improperly posting a 30.06 is reprehensible enough to warrant a fine. At least some sort of compensation for those that get harassed as a result of an improper sign…but then again, if a CHLer walked past a 30.06 sign and was arrested as a result (given no other reason for arrest), than the CHLer might have enough standing to sue the property owner and the PD. Not quite the prior restraint as the 30.05/30.06.

If you don't have property rights, then you really don't have any rights. In a truly free society, if I don't want a Jew on my property I can ban him, If I don't want a white man on my property I can ban him, if I don't want a Hispanic guy on my property I can ban him, if I don't want people with the AIDs on my property I can ban them, if I don't want people with contagious incurable diseases on my property I can ban them, if I don't want poisonous snakes on my property I can ban them, if I don't want firearms on my property I can ban them. Right or wrong, rational or irrational it is my property and in a truly free society I and I alone should have the final say who and what comes and who goes.

Guns are also a part of your property. You have a right to keep and bear them. If someone, be it the government, the court or some individual who doesn't like you can take away or violate your property rights then all liberty has essentially ceased and is now subject to the government and/or mobocracy rule. Such as the country in which we live now. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "Work Hard! Millions on welfare are depending on you." Of course we all know what time of the year it is. It is the time we take a large portion (some larger than others) of our hard earned labor and are forced to hand it over to the government to redistribute to whomever they plase. We have an ATF that can confiscate the property that enables your right to self defense if the federal government or state passes such a law or even at the agencys own whim depending on the circumstances.

When we go to the government and demand something of somebody else because we don't like the way they do things, we are in effect being tyrants.

In a truly free society you are subject to the rules of the landlord just as they are subject to you when they enter your domain. If the lord of the castle demands you enter unarmed, then you are free to (as Sir Cedric great line in the movie Ivanhoe went) "enter in peace and depart in peace...or else depart in pieces."

Awesome thread, I just wish I had had time to participate (the wife was out of town that weekend and I had the three-y.o. all to myself so didn't even see the thread until it was already 6 pages long!).

I came into the thread not having a clearly defined position on the issue (heck, I even wrote a letter about it to the SA Express-News a year ago), and after reading some very intelligent arguments on both sides....... I must admit, I'm no closer to having a clearly defined position. It's certainly a "whose rights trump whose" dilemma, and I just don't know which side of the fence I'm going to end up on personally.

As a tangent related to the "just try to refuse service to someone arbitrarily (or who's a member of a protected class) and see what happens" thing, check out this case in New Mexico:

Elaine Huguenin co-owns Elane Photography with her husband. The bulk of Elane's work is done by Elaine, though she subcontracts some of the work some of the time. Elane refused to photograph Vanessa Willock's same-sex commitment ceremonies, and just today the New Mexico Human Rights Commission held that this violated state antidiscrimination law. Elane has been ordered to pay over $6600 in attorney's fees and costs.

I haven't seen any written statement of reasons, but the order must implicitly rest on two interpretations of state law: (1) This sort of photography company constitutes a "public accommodation," defined by state law "any establishment that provides or offers its services, facilities, accommodations or goods to the public, but does not include a bona fide private club or other place or establishment that is by its nature and use distinctly private." (2) A refusal to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony constitutes sexual orientation discrimination, which New Mexico law forbids. These may or may not be sensible interpretations of the statutory text.

So basically New Mexico says a business MUST provide their services to everyone if they offer their services to anyone. The series of posts I linked discuss mostly a First Amendment challenge to the order (based on compelling a photographer to photograph things she wouldn't normally), comparing it to copy writers being compelled to write things they do not believe in/approve of. The Alliance Defense Fund is defending the owner but I'm not sure if they're using that same basis to challenge. It would seem to a logical person that the order doesn't have a leg to stand on, based solely on the fact that Christian bookstores can choose whether or not to stock certain books by certain authors on certain subjects, so why can't photographers/writers have the same freedom?

I do realize that there would be quite a leap in applying that reasoning to the very specific subject matter being discussed in this thread (meaning, bookstores/photographers/writers are choosing which products to create and/or sell, where in our case the businesses are choosing which customers to service - not exactly apples-to-apples), but I thought it was an interesting case to keep an eye on, in the vein of determining whether businesses can or can't, in this day & age, "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone", as the sign goes.

JT

So much for being able to disallow anyone I want in my "private business!"

stevie_d_64 wrote:

jimlongley wrote:I am sitting here envisioning the uproar ensuing if I owned a business and posted:

NO CELL PHONES, PDAS, OR OTHER SIMILAR ELECTRONIC DEVICES ALLOWED

All persons caught in possession of such devices on this premises without the owner's specific permission will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law per section 30.05 of the Texas Penal Code

Or some such thing - I'll bet it would make the evening news on four networks and TXscan.

OTOH, I could also post "NO NON-CHLs ALLOWED, be prepared to show ID."

I wonder how those would work.

There already is one like this in polling places on election day...Maybe not in reference to 30.05, but it is the law here in Texas...

Yeah, but polling places are truly public, not private businesses like we are discussing here, therefore they are subject to different rules.

bdickens wrote:So much for being able to disallow anyone I want in my "private business!"

I think it is because the service was denied based on a protected class (Sexual orintation) which in my view is not a ligitimate reason for denying service. Now if the photographer refused service because the couple wanted to wear purple...but the photographer does not wish to photograph people in who wear purple...then that is a valid reason for refusing service as wearing purple is not a protected class.

Just to be clear, I didn't post that as a "one of you loses, the other one wins", but more of a "let's watch some case law unfold and see what happens" kind of thing. Hopefully all of the folks posting here are mature enough to discuss this very important issue with rationality and intellectual honesty, free from any kind of "I win, you lose, HAHA" exclamations.

From what I've read on the case, I don't think the order is going to stand, but if it gets reversed due to First Amendment concerns (photography being akin to speech) it may not apply one whit to what we're talking about here (allowing entry into a privately-owned-but-open-to-the-public business). However, if the order does stand, and the anti-discrimination laws are ruled to be strong enough to override First Amendment speech protections, it's hard to foresee a similar case based on something other than First Amendment concerns being ruled in favor of the business owner. In which case, it affects this discussion indirectly.

JT