Florida has just passed a law preventing property owners from barring shoppers and employees from bringing guns onto their property and leaving them inside of locked cars. Glenn Reynolds says "Seems reasonable to me." I'm not so sure. I'm second to none in my love of the Second Amendment, but that's for the government, not private owners. My freedom of speech does not extend to telling my boss he's a flaming jerk (and aren't I lucky that James Bennet is such a great guy!). I'm not sure why my right to bear arms should include the right to bear them on someone else's land.
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" I'm second to none in my love of the Second Amendment, but that's for the government, not private owners."--MM
this is why you get called: "Lipstick Libertarian".
for you, it's just artifice..
P.S. yes, you couldn't find a single supporting POV in the Federalist Papers, for your, above, expressed 'opinion'..
Well, as long as it remains in your car they can't ban it.
People do retain some property right in their car despite the fact that it is on someone else's property. Its debatable I suppose, but its not like the employer can no longer prevent a person from taking the gun from the car or carrying it around the office. It's a fairly reasonable compromise to make the concealed carry permit more useful. Its not very useful if you have to constantly leave your weapon at home because you can't even have a gun in the glove box of your car if you enter certain businesses parking lots.
I do believe you do have the right to call your boss a flaming jerk. You will not be arrested or go to jail if you do.
Also, businesses do not have the right to ban black people from their stores. Why should they be allowed to ban armed people?
Megan,
I actually agree with you on the specific issue, but note that this same right of government intrusion on property rights is also the basis for all anti-discrimination law.
So which is it? Do you support people's right to control access to their property, or do you not?
Seems a very odd law to me, and I'm quite pro-gun.
But I'm also pro-property rights. Maybe for properties that are considered "public accommodations" this would make sense, but not for all property.
Of course, the onus should be on the property owner to request to search the trunks. Can't imagine that would help business.
Good gravy, is there aything more boring than an argument over another person's authenticity as a (insert political label here)? Isn't it more interesting to discuss whether property rights trump the right to bear arms?
I can see both sides of this, and of course the purpose of bearing arms is quite often the defense of proeprty rights, so there is some irony here as well. My inclinaion is to say that the property owner's rights trump the firearm owner's, but I can also see an argument made that the property owner, by allowing the firearm owner to park his car on the property, has voluntarily ceded some of his rights as property owner. It would be an interesting matter for two skilled lawyers to argue in front of skilled jurists, if such a lucky coincidence were to occur.
MEH,
The 2nd Amendment, like the 1st, only protects people from the government--not from private citizens. This isn't even close to being a constitutional question.
But it IS a question of common sense. Florida has seen a drastic decrease in violent crime after passing their right to concealed carry law. For businesses to prohibit guns from even being in locked cars at the workplace means that gun owners would have very few occasions to have a gun with them. After all, most of us travel outside the home to commute to work than for any other reason.
Now, if one doesn't think that gun owners should be able to carry a weapon most of the time when they are at risk, then that's one's viewpoint. I happen to think otherwise. I would like to know our host's reasoning for her thinking.
MEH, seriously? Seriously? Standing up for the right of private property owners to determine what is brought onto their property is evidence that I'm not a serious libertarian?
You might consider the notion that I'm so serious about my libertarianism that I think it's about a lot more than my ability to pack steel wherever I go.
Also, businesses do not have the right to ban black people from their stores. Why should they be allowed to ban armed people?
Because you can leave your gun at home but you can't leave your skin? Seems pretty obvious to me.
this is why you get called: "Lipstick Libertarian".
What's un-libertarian about the right of a property owner to choose what is allowed on their property?
WA,
she was the one doing the Nancy Kerrigan imitation, I was just giving her a concrete example..
+ she won't answer Yancey's Q, in any discernably substantive fashion.
Just wait until you have a strike at some facility and the employees decide to have a "bear arms day" when everyone with a concealed weapon shows up to work with a big bulge in their shirt.
The thing is, this law is nonsense.
There are many work areas where having a gun around is downright dangerous.
i.e. places where intense magnets are used (MRI area), places where you are working near or around places where a dropped gun can discharge, etc.
Or in a secured area, like your average airport.
We would have to look at the text of the law to see what it actually means, but the policy of states extending protections for certain rights in places of public accommodation (See, e.g., Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)), then the extension of that protection to other constitutional guarantees doesn't seem problematic. Whether that policy is prudent is a different question, however.
"I'm second to none in my love of the Second Amendment, but that's for the government, not private owners."--MM
-- is evidence that I'm not a serious libertarian?
Yeah, MM, that, + why not answer Yancey's Q?
There are many work areas where having a gun around is downright dangerous.
Right, and employers are perfectly within their rights to prevent that. This law only specifies that guns may be in a locked car in the employer's parking lot. The constitutional issues are murky although probably fine via current caselaw, but as a policy matter this seems totally reasonable.
Do you have any lawyer friends? I ask because, on both this and a products liability post you had a while back, you show that you really don't know much about legal concepts. I don't mean that too harshly - most people don't, just like most lawyers don't intuitively get a lot of stuff about economics and business because, well, it's complex and confusing and there's a reason people study for so long to become masters of it. However, when you blog about them, you come off sounding, well, like most lawyers sound when discussing economics. So, if you have some friends who are lawyers (and I'm just gonna assume that you do living in D.C. and all), you might consider running these by them first to see if others have given thought to these questions already.
On this topic, a basic principle is that businesses are not private in the sense that people are not allowed to go on them, but that it invites the public to come on to the premise. This gives the members of the public who enter a business - invitees, as opposed to trespassers or licensees who enter private land - greater rights when on that land and the business a different set of legal obligations.
This, of course, does not clear up the question of what the content of those rights and obligations should be. You can make an argument that the obligation of business owners who invite the public onto their premises to keep that premise reasonably safe in fact demands that they be allowed to take reasonable steps to keep it safe, including by banning guns. That is a different argument, though, and is really not resolved by the fact that business land is "private" land - it is well recognized that business land is special and different from a person's residence or other private property.
Yancey, I'm quite sympathetic to the view that the 1964 Civil Rights Act includes a illegitimate incursion on the righs of private property owners. However, I also recognize that the law was not passed in a vacuum, that is was passed after another hundred years of state enforced, often violent, assaults on the rights of freed slaves and their descendents.
To not expect the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction, but rather to stop precisely at the point which represented the proper balance between intolerable state based discrimination, and immoral, but tolerable, private discrimination, after such a long history of evil, is not realistic. Furthermore, on balance, where the pendulum is now, with cafe and motel owners, among others, forced to sell to everyone, regardless of race, is far, far, more preferable to where the pendulum was before, with the descendents of slaves attacked by the state, or attacked by other citizens while the state did nothing, for racial reasons.
The world ain't perfect, and efforts to make it so will likely make things worse, no matter what ideology the effort is in service to. Those of a libertarian frame of mind should recognize this better than most, but alas, quite frequently do not.
I don't think this is even a remotely close issue from a libertarian perspective. From a constitutional perspective it's even clearer and not even worth discussion.
But "rights" in libertarianism are held vis-a-vis the state. The only "rights" you have against other citizens are your rights against the use of force or fraud. In this case, the state is quite literally granting a right to gun owners against their employers. In doing so, they are saying that gun owners are legally superior to employers. This is incompatible with any notion that the law must be neutral in its application.
As far as I'm concerned, any argument that this is a just law would fail Libertarianism 101.
Maybe gun owners can put on blackface and really cause fits in people who don't have a principled understanding of property rights.
Not up to me, obviously, Megan, but this is one time I'd give MEH a pass.
Getting the title of "Lipstick Libertarian", which sounds sexy as all hell, is easily worth a random swipe.
Re: Property Rights vs. Unlimited Liberty
I submit the following distinction. In incidences where properties of your person are beyond your control (race, sexual orientation, sex, etc.), unlimited liberty shall be afforded at all times. In incidences where properties of your person are under your control (carrying a gun, speaking, wearing certain clothes, etc.), property rights shall reign superior.
John Jenkins,
I agree that for places of public accommodation that are essentially like public squares (e.g. shopping malls), Pruneyard Shopping Center is the right model. I think many basically libertarian people would agree that a place that holds itself out as inviting the general public and that serves as a quasi-commons area should not by able to limit people who are otherwise behaving lawfully.
However, Pruneyard is inapplicable to a large number of employer settings where the general public is not invited, such as a factory or office.
While I personally feel quite torn about this issue, perhaps the correct solution is that state laws can allow employers and other property owners to prohibit concealed weapons on their property only where their business is not otherwise in a quasi-public space, so that Pruneyard would apply. Private actors would remain free to vocally condemn those property owners that banned concealed carry weapons. Perhaps termination or retaliation for those arguing that concealed weapons should be allowed could even fall under wrongful termination statutes, but that's a separate question.
Christopher, does that mean really short adults have to be allowed on the rides at Disneyland? Or can Disneyland conclude that it is dangerous, and not in their interest to have news of customers being killed at the park disseminated to the public, and thus can prohibit them?
Question for the lawyers in the crowd; suppose the law is overturned, and employers are said to have the right to ban firearms in their employees' cars, when parked on the employer's property. Now, suppose a disgruntled former employee, who had made threats to engage in violence, shows up in the parking lot, squeezing off rounds, and no security personnel are around. Could the employer's liability exposure be increased because, in addition to not taking security measures, despite the threats, the employer actively took action which prevented otherwise trained and lisenced victims from having an effective means of defense?
Much as I like the idea of banning guns in the workplace itself (I've worked in places where THINGS might have happened if guns were around), I don't see how it's a problem if the guns must remain in locked vehicles in the parking lot. I've worked in secure facilities where all sorts of things were banned, including in parked cars. It can be a pain to even try to remember what you have in the trunk on any given day, especially on Fridays when people often leave for weekend activities right from work. Is the Coleman stove with the gas cylinder a problem? How about the boom box with the built-in tape recorder? Bow and arrow set? Lawn darts? All of these would have been problems in one place, and keeping track was annoying.
I assume that the responsible argument for having guns locked in the car trunk comes from hunters and target shooters who want to be able to go practice their hobbies right from work (or shopping, perhaps even in a strip mall with an outdoor gear store). People who carry LOADED weapons in the car proper are a different category in my mind, but it's not mine to complain if the Florida legislature decides to treat them the same.
Wow, this is about the most uninformed post on the issue:
Under the law,
1) You wouldn't be able to bring the guns inside if the employer had that restriction (thus preventing the "coming in with a bulge" problem).
2) Parking lot =/= MRI room or welding floor
3) At an airport, if you park there, it will be outside the secured area.
Btw, I'm sure the problem of having to carry your stuff around in your means of transportation isn't a new one. Shouldn't there be case law going back to the frontier days, saying when you can and can't keep a man from having banned items that he's left with his horse?
John Derbyshire summed it up best of all:
Guns are a coward's weapon. Real men fight with their fists.
The State isn't basing the guns- okay- in- parked- cars- okay law on an anti-discrimination theory (though I personally would sympathize if they did). The new law is based on a police-power theory.
Citizens licensed to carry guns defend the public as well as themselves by deterring and resisting violent criminals. The State sees that businesses' (palpably irrational in most cases) bans on employees or visitors storing their guns safely outside buildings or enclosed spaces make it nearly impossible for licensed citizens to travel with their guns. That prevents licensed citizens from boosting public safety by deterring and resisting violent criminals.
So the State must adjust the balance between the rights of property owners and public safety. Businesses which ban even guns stored in private cars in parking lots diminish the safety of people far beyond such businesses' property. Such bans constitute a nuisance, that is, using one's property in a way that damages people elsewhere.
At the risk of provoking snickers, the law is similar to restroom laws. Seriously, the State of Florida requires nearly all employers to provide toilet facilities for employees and forces many businesses such as restaurants to provide toilets for visitors. Florida state law (Public Health Code 381.009) forbids businesses to charge for use of toilets. What's the Constitutional basis for such laws? Simple: if businesses don't provide restrooms then their workers or visitors will befoul nearby public property and work or shop with filthy hands, endangering everyone's health. To prevent that, the State overrides businesses' property rights to some extent, by forcing businesses which attract workers/visitors to some area provide toilets for them.
Businesses which ban even stored guns in parking lots endanger everyone's safety by preventing licensed gun carriers from deterring criminal violence. If the State can force businesses to provide toilets, it can force them to allow licensed citizens to lock up their guns in their own cars in business parking lots.
(All the talk about bringing ferrous metal into MRI facilities is silly. The new Florida law doesn't compel businesses to permit guns where they could actually pose any danger.)
Sorry, I was reading from the top DOWN, so I didn't realize that "Lipstick Libertarian" was not an original coinage but only an uninspired repetition.
While I find the term much more amusing than offensive, I wish you the best of luck debating all your detractors, be they jockstrap liberals or bowtie conservatives!
Know what another name is for a "real man" who brings his fists to a gunfight? Homicide victim.
I don't presently own a firearm, because I think in my present circumstances my odds of getting into a violent confrontation are smaller than my chances of being struck by lightning. Having said that, if I was living in circumstances where the odds were far higher, I'd carry a firearm. There have been quite few skilled martial artists or boxers who have found themselves on the wrong end of the barrel, and it was no consolation to them that the people on the right end weren't "real men".
er, riddle me this batman? How is the property owner to know if you have a locked up gun? Can they ban you from having a guns and roses CD in your car too? Force you to wear boxers instead of briefs?
This law was obviously a response to something, but what was the situation? The law requires a concealed carry permit, and the weapon stays locked in the car. Why would the employer NEED to verify, why do they even need to know?
Welcome to democracy. People tend to make some crazy laws. I agree this is an anti-libertarian law. Hell, it's a law.
MEH: Libertarians believe the government has no business interfering with such things.
Please to explain to me the libertarian principle that suggests that private property owners can't regulate their property as they see fit?
What do the Federalist Papers (which are more Liberal than libertarian - at least more than Nozick or Rothbard libertarian) have to do with the issue of private property restrictions on armament?
Do you imagine that Hamilton and Madison would have found it relevant to their papers about the proper role of government to even speak to the issue of private property owners demanding that their patrons not be armed on their premises?
Or, for that matter, that they might have found government interference with their property rights right-and-proper because they were in service of the bearing of arms on that property?
Demanding that Megan answer to the Federalist Papers when she is not speaking of the Federal government, and indeed is speaking against a government intrusion on property owners, is madness. And a madness that opens you up to a charge of your own inability to justify your position on the same grounds.
(My own position is ambivalent; there is an unavoidable tension between property rights and the damage to the right to bear arms in general involved with being unable to even bring arms, locked up, onto property - even if one is not "bearing" them on that property.
It is impossible for me to claim that libertarian views are clearly are in favour of one of those rights over the other.
If you think otherwise, try making the case rather than snarking and trolling Megan.)
The arguments in favor of this law in this thread have proceeded on anti-libertarian bases:
1. "It's just like laws against discrimination!" Those laws are anti-libertarian.
2. "It's just like laws declaring shopping malls to be public commons!" Those laws [and judicial rulings] are anti-libertarian.
3. "It's really inconvenient if you can't keep your gun in your car at all times, and that convenience is more important than property rights!" This is quite an anti-libertarian argument.
The one novel argument I'm seeing here is Mark's, which advances a police power claim.
To this argument I would say that it is the responsibility of the state to apprehend violent criminals, and that you're essentially granting the state a right to pass a law that says, "We can't actually provide public safety, so you have to give up your property rights in order to facilitate private use of force in defense of the law." That seems odd to me.
Mark's argument is a semantic one. The basis is still the government's perogative to abrogate property rights to enforce certain rights for other people. It abridges the right to control access to one's property. It is fundamentally unlibertarian, however you name the theory.
" I'm second to none in my love of the Second Amendment, but that's for the government, not private owners."--MM
this is why you get called: "Lipstick Libertarian".
for you, it's just artifice..
P.S. yes, you couldn't find a single supporting POV in the Federalist Papers, for your, above, expressed 'opinion'..
Posted by MEH | April 16, 2008 11:53 AM
Sigi--
why don't you read what I posted, then, as opposed to your, above, line of questioning, ask me Q's that are directly relevant to my post.
you may consider: "try making the case rather than snarking and trolling " taking your own advice..
Not being a Libertarian, I'm free to say that I think this kind of law is a great idea. A concealed carry permit is meaningless if every employer or business bans guns in cars in the parking lot. You then can't actually carry your gun anywhere unless you limit yourself to a few locations.
This law also helps employers... by passing the law, an employer doesn't have to wonder if they should make a rule banning guns in the parking lot. There's no liability because they didn't search everyone's trunk.
In Washington, driving areas which are publicly accessible, even if private property, are subject to police jurisdiction and the applicable laws apply. So you can't drive in a parking lot without a license unless the parking lot isn't accesible from a public road, i.e. gated. Obviously the laws of the state matter, but given that the owner of the parking lot can't allow you to drive without a license, or with kids in the car without carseats, or really anything else car-related, why do they get to specify what you're allowed to carry in your car?
And what is libertarian about claiming that the owner of the car can't store his lawful possessions in said car?
Bleah. This is yet another reason why I'm not a lawyer.
Yancey -
I don't think Mark's argument is purely semantic. (It may not be a winning one on libertarian grounds, but it isn't form instead of substance.) All libertarians would agree that my rights (property included) end when my exercise of those rights (or use of property) harms others. The idea that I should be able to do what I want with my land doesn't mean I can damn my stream to flood your house (or introduce timberwolves that eat your sheep, or whatever).
The argument Mark fronted is essentially that my preventing people from keeping otherwise legal weapons in locked cars on my property imposes such a harm on others (in decreased public safety). Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but the theory of the argument is not anti-libertarian.
Swiss: Because sometimes employers have searched employees' cars, and fired them when guns were found. (At least once in Oklahoma, I don't know about Florida.)
Would this law apply when an employee is driving his own car on company business, e.g. pizza delivery persons who drive their own cars? Recently a deliveryman for a major pizza chain defended himself against robbery with a gun, and the chain fired him for carrying the gun. Mark Seecof's argument (1:24 pm) that ensuring that concealed weapons licensees can carry their guns to and from work improves the public safety would apply with even more strength to pizza delivery drivers, taxi drivers, and convenience store clerks with concealed-carry licenses who wish to carry their guns on the job - such jobs are more dangerous than police or fire department work, in large part because of frequent robberies.
The basic problem is that in the present state of tort law, there is an asymetry with respect to guns at workplaces. A taxi company that disabled the driver's side airbag in its taxis would pay out millions every time a driver was injured in an accident, but one that bans drivers from carrying the means to defend themselves will pay only workman's compensation rates (which are the same even if the employee is at fault) for drivers injured by robbers. However, an employer who allows employees to carry guns on the job can expect a huge lawsuit any time someone gets shot by a disgruntled employee, never mind that no company policy is going to deter someone who isn't deterred by the laws against murder, and not even a fortified checkpoint with metal detectors is going to stop parking-lot shootings. So insurers are likely to require a policy against guns on the property, even if they have statistical evidence proving that armed employees with carry licenses reduce the chance of non-self-defense shootings, because without a gun ban they pay heavily for all such shootings and with one, they don't pay (much) for any of them.
My ideal law would not be this one, but one that reversed the legal asymetries while leaving the employer free to be an idiot - if they can afford the insurance.
All libertarians would agree that my rights (property included) end when my exercise of those rights (or use of property) harms others. The idea that I should be able to do what I want with my land doesn't mean I can damn my stream to flood your house (or introduce timberwolves that eat your sheep, or whatever).
In those examples, the harm extends over the property line.
In the case of my banning guns from my property, that ends right at the property line. You are in no way harmed by it unless you choose to visit my property. My right is bounded by the property line and my "fist" is therefore stopped short of your "nose". All you have to do to avoid it is refrain from coming to my property.
You may be arguing that the absence of guns from my property creates a "penumbra of lawlessness" that extends into nearby properties and into the public domain. But it doesn't. The writ of the state is still good - they just have to enforce the laws without deputizing my property for that purpose. If the state is admitting that it cannot do that - that it can't enforce the law on abutting properties - then it should devote greater resources to the task until it can.
given that the owner of the parking lot can't allow you to drive without a license, or with kids in the car without carseats, or really anything else car-related
Actually, they should be able to do all those things. The authority of the police to enforce driving regulations only exists because the roads belong to the public. Parking lots don't. Police should not be permitted to ticket any activity that does not occur on a public way. In some jurisdictions they can't.
Perhaps legislators believe that rights to personal security and self-ownership trump rights of land-ownership?
It's a serious issue with the "privatisation of public space" - that is that shared spaces, such as shopping centres, are privately owned, and yet there are huge crowds of the public there, as well as private goons.
I don't think that any libertarian would be happy in a state where the police are able to effectively protect citizens from robbery or assault. There is no way to do that without creating a draconian police state.
Therefore, citizens should have the right to protect themselves. A patchwork of gun/no-gun zones would effectively prevent individuals from taking advantage of the right to bear arms. This law is a good compromise. It allows for armed citizens to go everywhere, but allows property owners to bar the carrying of weapons on their property.
Just for the record, I'm not arguing that this is libertarian, just that it's a reasonable compromise.
D, are you really unaware that the "nonsense" law in question does not permit any of these things that you are worried about?
Mark, re your 12:20pm comment: I don't view this as making gun-owning employees legally superior to their employers. Rather, all it's doing is clarifying that an employer's property rights do not extend to the interiors of their employees' cars.
Before you dismiss this as farfetched, consider--what kind of discussion would we be having if a substantial number of employers insisted on the right to search their employees' cars and summarily fire them if they were found in possession of National Review or Mother Jones?
On the off-chance anyone is still reading, last night I was able to resolve the conflict between my intuitions on this issue. FWIW, I am libertarian.
I will break this into numbers just because that makes it easier to write.
1) Today, and in any libertarian society that would ever exist, land can have easement restrictions. Ownership of the land does not imply the right to do everything you want with it, and such cases would be common under libertarianism as well.
2) It may surprise you to know that landowners, like the businesses discussed here, also "own" the road in front of their properties, up to the middle of it (and it would probably be the same in libertarianism). But who actually thinks this implies the right to throw rules on people who drive by? No, the ownership there is with many restrictions and obligations. Despite being their property, business owners do not have the right to keep people from driving by with guns in their cars.
3) It is my contention that today, and in libertarianism, "access points" for your land have less, but similar restrictions. That is, in a society where people normally travel by car, ownership of the access points you provide for your land is, as in the case of the road in front of the property, not complete. For access points, people have the right to leave their effects in their car, so long as they are secured, etc.
4) This does not void the right of landowners to have gun-free areas. Obviously, as many have pointed out, there are situations where you will legitimately need to have precisely zero guns. So the employer would absolutely have the right to establish "secure areas" from which guns are banned -- but only if they regulate these areas beyond what they provide for access points. That is, if in addition to the parking lot, they have a gated area where they actually establish intent to keep out guns by searching cars, then they can ban guns. And regular homeowners (or renters!) can have the same policy.
What, I claim, they cannot do, is allow free access to their property (by having access points) while reserving an unlimited right to rifle through your stuff. If they want to enforce the policy, they can search cars and cut off regular access. But that would probably cost them employees...
5) So yes, I belive it's consistent with libertarians *not* to allow regulation of transportation means when accessing someone's land, to be unlimited. (This situation does tempt double negatives...) Replace "car" with "saddlebags" and the same conclusions apply.
Good post, Person. I think that's quite a good start for a libertarian argument against this law.
I will add that one of the important aspects that is missing from this discussion, from both a legal and moral basis, is that we are talking about people invited onto the property in question. Employees are invited onto the property, and that invitation carries with it both legal and moral obligations to treat the invitee with a certain amount of respect and to protect that invitee.
Anti-discrimination laws for commercial establishments are in some way related. If you invite the general public, anti-discrimination law says you must invite all the public, not just certain groups you may prefer.
So, at its core, both anti-discrimination law and FL's law prohibiting bans on concealed carry weapons are the state's regulation of what rights of a third party can be limited as part of your invitation to that third party to enter your property.
Keep people out entirely, if you choose, and the laws will have no effect on you. But the state arguably has a reasonable interest to limit the rights of third parties that you can take away when you invite them on your property.
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