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seamusTX wrote:Legislators need to hear that if they do not support a measure, you (their constituent) will be voting for someone else in November, even if it's a Libertarian.

..."even if"...

If everyone would just vote Libertarian anyway, we could fix the problem by eliminating PC Chapter 46 entirely!

KBCraig wrote:

seamusTX wrote:Legislators need to hear that if they do not support a measure, you (their constituent) will be voting for someone else in November, even if it's a Libertarian.

..."even if"...

If everyone would just vote Libertarian anyway, we could fix the problem by eliminating PC Chapter 46 entirely!

As i understand it there were some so called Republicans that kept this bill at bay. What stinks is the bill got killed by underhanded means. They didn't have a public role call vote so we really don't know all of the folks that killed this bill. It just gets killed quietly and the campaign money rolls. and the wheels get all greased.

KBCraig wrote: ..."even if"...

If everyone would just vote Libertarian anyway, we could fix the problem by eliminating PC Chapter 46 entirely!

Sorry, Kevin. It ain't gonna happen, no matter how much you or I would like it. Very few voters are single-issue 2nd-Amendment absolutists.

Half the population owns firearms or lives in a household where someone does. They just don't vote that way.

How many belong to the NRA or TSRA?

- Jim

Thanks for the Lynch Ryan / Workers Comp Insider link, Jim. It was an interesting read. My take on it is this: Their read of the statistics is probably flawed (correlation vs. causality in those "5 times greater" businesses, etc., etc.); their understanding of the legal argument is disingenuous (aren't employers already regulated on their private properties IRT their employees? There are many limits on what an employer can and cannot do to an employee. Also, there is the problem of priority. Should the companies' private property rights be of a higher priority than an employee's constitutional rights?)
I'd like to see the victims and their families start to sue employers when the companies' policies prevent self defense at work. Maybe the costs of civil litigation can bring business around one of these days.
Of course KBCraig has the best solution: elect Libertarians!

seamusTX wrote:Sorry, Kevin. It ain't gonna happen, no matter how much you or I would like it. Very few voters are single-issue 2nd-Amendment absolutists.

Yeah, but I'm still a single-issue absolutist - it's just that my single issue is seven articles and twenty seven amendments long.

seamusTX wrote:

KBCraig wrote: ..."even if"...

If everyone would just vote Libertarian anyway, we could fix the problem by eliminating PC Chapter 46 entirely!

Sorry, Kevin. It ain't gonna happen, no matter how much you or I would like it. Very few voters are single-issue 2nd-Amendment absolutists.

I'm not a single-issue voter. Well, maybe I am: my issue is Liberty.

I can't always vote Libertarian in good conscience. For example, next year I'll be voting for Ron Paul.

KBCraig wrote:I'm not a single-issue voter. Well, maybe I am: my issue is Liberty.

I respect that.

The problem is that too many people at all points in the political spectrum want to use the law to prevent others from doing evil (according to their point of view) or to secure some special benefit for themselves. Politicians translate that desire into votes.

Even the on-topic issue that we are discussing is a dilemma of liberty: Do individuals have the right to keep their weapons in their vehicles on company property, or do employers have the right to restrict them?

My personal opinion is that large corporations have come to have powers equivalent to those of the government, and we need to use the democratic process (legislation) to hold them in check.

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:Even the on-topic issue that we are discussing is a dilemma of liberty: Do individuals have the right to keep their weapons in their vehicles on company property, or do employers have the right to restrict them?

My personal opinion is that large corporations have come to have powers equivalent to those of the government, and we need to use the democratic process (legislation) to hold them in check.

I understand that large corporations have come to have a lot of power. But, I believe it is wrong for government to tell any property owner that they cannot control what happens on their property -- even if the property owner is a big corporation.

If Mega Lo Mart wants to ban guns from their property, including in employee cars, they have the right to do so. Just the same as I have the right to say a neighbor can't use my yard as a shortcut when riding a 4-wheeler.

KBCraig wrote:If Mega Lo Mart wants to ban guns from their property, including in employee cars, they have the right to do so. Just the same as I have the right to say a neighbor can't use my yard as a shortcut when riding a 4-wheeler.

I don't see those situations as equivalent.

You use your private property for enjoyment (that's a legal term). You can prohibit anyone from using it, or allow people to use it.

Businesses want employees and customers to come and work or spend money, for the profit of the company. Then they want to dictate the conditions of how the employees and customers behave.

To some extent, they can legally do that -- dress codes, for example. In other cases, society has decided that they cannot discriminate against disabled people, for example, or prohibit the wearing of certain religious articles.

(The pure libertarian position says that there should be no such regulation and companies that discriminate will be punished by the marketplace. That did not happen when it was legal to discriminate.)

We're just deciding where to set the boundaries.

- Jim

There is not a single instance where any private business, or honestly, government (remember NASA MSC?) property where a policy banning firearms has prevented anyone from bringing in a firearm and killing people.

I don't buy the argument where insurance companies are a reason firearms are banned. If it was, your homeowner or renter insurance would stipulate the same thing, and I certainly would not be insurable given the number of firearms I have and the associated ammo.

IMHO, if private busines was forced by law to ensure their employees safety TO and FROM work if they banned legal carry, then the HR types would be rewriting policy like there was no tomorrow. Companies do respond to libility. How many individuals who have been traumatized by workplace murders have sued for lack of security?

An example of how easy it is to bring a firearm into a prohibited place:

I am a navy vet, submarine service. Christmas 1976 I was packing to leave on patrol aboard the fleet ballistic missile boat I was stationed on that was moored at the naval weapons station, Charleston, SC. The place was as secure as any place could be with thousands of nuclear weapons stored there. Signs were posted that deadly force was authorized without warning. If your car broke down you stayed in it.

My son watched my wife help me pack my seabag. Santa had brought him a nifty two-gun cowboy rig with shiny cap pistols. He wanted to give me a going away present so he put a pistol in the bottom of my seabag. My wife drove me to the pier through the weapons station. At the pier my bag was searched by the tender security. I boarded the boat and when I turned my seabag upside down to dump my stuff for stowing in my bunky locker, out tumbled the pistol.

My shipmates were quite curious as to why I had brought a six-shooter onto the boat. Needless to say I did have a little fun with it when the off-planesman tried to wake me up to go on watch. The chief-of-the-boat and I had a discussion as he held me off the deck by my chest hair. He was a big ol' boy.

I know this may sound silly to most, but it was indeed a big deal. I had to get the durned thing off the boat and back home after patrol.

Policy and rules prevent nothing. Policy and rules are the HR equivalent of gun ban legislation.

Employers should be forced to allow us to exercise our right of self defense, at least let us have them in our vehicles. Even the government. The second amendment applies to them, especially. I will never understand how the feds get away with what they do, even in national parks.

Anygun

seamusTX wrote:The pure libertarian position says that there should be no such regulation and companies that discriminate will be punished by the marketplace. That did not happen when it was legal to discriminate.

Of course it did. Discrimination was far from universal, even in those places where the law demanded it. And of course, outlawing discrimination has not stopped it among those who are determined to discriminate.

Widespread discrimination stopped not because of laws, but because most people realized it was wrong, and stopped discriminating, and stopped supporting those who do.

Property is property, and the owners should be free to invite or bar whomever they wish.

I think we've all expressed our opinions clearly. I don't want to go off on a tangent about racial discrimination.

- Jim

I didn't mean to take off on a tangent. I was just using it to illustrate what should properly be every property owner's right to control his property as he sees fit.

And for the record, I find racial discrimination both morally repugnant, and a very stupid business decision -- exactly the same as discriminating against gun owners.

Being morally repugnant and stupid isn't against the law, nor should it be. Those things have consequences of their own, with no need to involve the government.

KBCraig wrote:Being stupid isn't against the law,

if only......

Why hasn’t any one considered that businesses are, to a major extent, driven by their insurance companies on these issues? They are following "the insurance rate hike "carrot. If there was more of a liability exclusion forms the actions of CHL holders and a better protection from the acts of employees against each other, the residence might fade. I deal a lot with my employers risk management team, of which most are hunters and they tell me the issue is more involved on the complicated issues of tossing out the idiot employee, and not being litigated by the same because they treated that person differently.

Consider If they can be litigated because a man stood to close to a another and made his co-worker "feel" harassed, what’s to prevent , "He intimidated me by bragging about being armed".

I really think we’d be better served if we looked for the “Behind the scenes� source of the objection, as I don’t think it is really from the investor’s side. Insurance companies where presenting some complicated and expensive litigation hazards to employers. We need to target the risk management side of the business units.