Today the House of Delegates approved a bill, HB 162, that prohibits private property owners from establishing or enforcing any policy that prohibits a person from storing a firearm in a locked car or truck parked on their property. What’s more the bill says that you can be sued and required to pay damages if you seek to enforce such a policy.
This bill is brought to us by the National Rifle Association which was incensed when Weyerhaeuser fired an employee for violating a company policy prohibiting firearms on its property. The NRA pledged to outlaw such policies in every state in the union. Hence this bill offered by Delegate Lingamfelter. Listen to an NPR report on the push to enact these laws. Read more.
In an act of some irony, given the intent of the proponents, big companies with secured parking lots got an amendment to the Virginia bill that exempts them from coverage.
So whose private property rights would be secondary under this legislation to another person’s gun “rights”?
The property of any “person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity” to which access is not “restricted or limited through the use of a gate, security station, or other means”. In other words, every mom and pop store, home on a residential street, office building or restaurant with an open parking lot, shopping center, church, open campus private college, etc.
Now, mind you, if we were talking about 1st amendment rights, the property owner’s right to restrict access would be and is sacrosanct. If you don’t believe me, ask the candidate for the House of Delegates who was arrested at a Charlottesville shopping center for distributing political literature in violation of that private property owner’s policy restricting what would have been protected free speech on a public sidewalk.
To my mind, it is one thing for the state to adopt a policy that all public property should be open to lawful gun toting citizens, whether public parks or the House of Delegates’ office building.
But, I would argue, it is quite another thing for the legislature to tell me that I cannot have a policy at my business that prohibits my employees and customers from bringing guns onto my property and leaving them “stored” in their cars, (unless, of course, I’m a big employer with a controlled access gated parking lot whose lobbyists made sure that I was exempt). And, is it “limited government” to say to me that I risk a lawsuit if I tell people coming to my house and parking in my driveway that they can’t store a gun in their car while on my property?
I find small comfort in the fact that the bill says that the property owner can’t be sued if someone breaks into a car parked on his/her property and uses the gun “stored” there to commit harm to others or if the gunowner him or herself commits mayhem while on your property.
Why might I want to establish that guns are not welcome in my office or on my office property? The rising incidence of workplace violence, for one thing. The number one cause of death for women in the workplace is homicide. Partners and boyfriends commit 13,000 incidents of workplace violence a year. As a private property owner, I should be able to decide that these statistics warrant a “no guns” policy in my workplace and in my parking lot.
The gun rights folks will say that anyone who established a no guns policy on a shopping mall parking lot or at a multi-occupied office complex would risk commercial boycotts and worse. So be it.
If you don’t want to leave your gun at home, and I want to prohibit you from “storing” it in the car while you shop at my store, visit my office, or eat at my restaurant, I should have the right to do so at the risk of losing your business but not at the risk of being sued under a wrong headed law that makes my private property rights subservient to your gun rights.
