Guns In The Parking Lot
A debate rages here in Florida about whether or not businesses have the right to forbid employees with state-issued concealed weapon permits from having a firearm locked in their vehicle while they are at work. The Florida legislature, representing the will of the people, says no. Hired gun attorneys for Walt Disney theme parks, the single largest on-site employer in all the Sunshine State and a corporate fascist megaconglomerate, say yes.
While the law was being written, Disney sent in its lawyer commandos to insert a clause exempting businesses that hold licenses for explosives from having to allow employees to keep weapons in their cars. Disney, of course, puts on nightly fireworks displays, so there you go. No guns in the Disney parking lot. A judge has just disagreed with them, and around we go again.
This whole thing is a farce. The unspoken argument here is, of course, again, if we could put this one to bed that would be *so* nice, that gun ownership equals homicidal insanity. Check the number of guns in private hands in the US against the number used in crime, and you'll find out that simply isn't true. But it's the unspoken argument that's the hardest to kill. We saw the same argument over and over again, state by grueling state, as concealed carry laws swept the nation in the last twenty years. Every time, the anti-gun rights side argued that if you started issuing permits, there'd be shootouts on every corner, bodies would be stacked five high, chaos like when the Visigoths burned Rome. It never happened, not once, not anywhere; but still, gun ownership equals madness.
Disney doesn't search cars. Isn't that a fun fact? Disney does not search their employees cars. The manpower necessary to search something like fifty thousand vehicles each day would be prohibitively expensive, and the law and the ACLU (who as usual has nothing to say about the 2nd Amendment) would come down on them like an asteroid the size of Madagascar if they did. So there is no practical application for Disney's rule against weapons in employees' cars, because Disney isn't even looking in the cars to find them.
If you forbid people to have their legal weapons in their cars at work, you are forbidding people from having their legal weapons most of the time, because in a typical day's driving itinerary, work stands like a redwood right in the middle. If you can't have your legal weapon at work, you can't have it before work or after work, either. Not until you go home again.
Is the will of Disney a straight flush to the legislature's full house? Does the authority of a commercial corporation beat out the will of the people of Florida, the law of the state of Florida, and the Constitution of the United States? If Disney were to say, state and federal laws about sexual harassment don't apply here, state and federal laws about safety standards don't apply here, state and federal laws about minimum wage don't apply here, we're banning Jews here, just because we're Disney, goddamnit, what would our reply be? We'd set the dogs on them to straighten them out. What should we do in this firearms issue? Set the dogs on them to straighten them out.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-guns3008jul30,0,5950092.story
While the law was being written, Disney sent in its lawyer commandos to insert a clause exempting businesses that hold licenses for explosives from having to allow employees to keep weapons in their cars. Disney, of course, puts on nightly fireworks displays, so there you go. No guns in the Disney parking lot. A judge has just disagreed with them, and around we go again.
This whole thing is a farce. The unspoken argument here is, of course, again, if we could put this one to bed that would be *so* nice, that gun ownership equals homicidal insanity. Check the number of guns in private hands in the US against the number used in crime, and you'll find out that simply isn't true. But it's the unspoken argument that's the hardest to kill. We saw the same argument over and over again, state by grueling state, as concealed carry laws swept the nation in the last twenty years. Every time, the anti-gun rights side argued that if you started issuing permits, there'd be shootouts on every corner, bodies would be stacked five high, chaos like when the Visigoths burned Rome. It never happened, not once, not anywhere; but still, gun ownership equals madness.
Disney doesn't search cars. Isn't that a fun fact? Disney does not search their employees cars. The manpower necessary to search something like fifty thousand vehicles each day would be prohibitively expensive, and the law and the ACLU (who as usual has nothing to say about the 2nd Amendment) would come down on them like an asteroid the size of Madagascar if they did. So there is no practical application for Disney's rule against weapons in employees' cars, because Disney isn't even looking in the cars to find them.
If you forbid people to have their legal weapons in their cars at work, you are forbidding people from having their legal weapons most of the time, because in a typical day's driving itinerary, work stands like a redwood right in the middle. If you can't have your legal weapon at work, you can't have it before work or after work, either. Not until you go home again.
Is the will of Disney a straight flush to the legislature's full house? Does the authority of a commercial corporation beat out the will of the people of Florida, the law of the state of Florida, and the Constitution of the United States? If Disney were to say, state and federal laws about sexual harassment don't apply here, state and federal laws about safety standards don't apply here, state and federal laws about minimum wage don't apply here, we're banning Jews here, just because we're Disney, goddamnit, what would our reply be? We'd set the dogs on them to straighten them out. What should we do in this firearms issue? Set the dogs on them to straighten them out.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-guns3008jul30,0,5950092.story