Alphecca

I'll take a stand...sort of.

I agree that businesses should be able to regulate what happens on their property. Except they're already not allowed to do so. Can you refuse to hire someone because he or she is Hispanic? Black? White? Well, maybe that last one. But you get the point.

Should 2nd amendment advocates then take advantage of previous wrongs and add to them? In my opinion, no. The question for me is whether or not a company has the right to search my car/person/etc. as a condition of my employment (or simply by virtue of me entering the property). The answer can be simple, if it's in your employment contract, you've agreed to it. If it's not in there, then I would argue they have not right to do so.

Still, laws could be passed that would negate such contractual clauses either way. Whether or not those laws are constitutional would, unfortunately, be decided by the courts.

So IMHO, if you've agreed to not bring weapons (or anything else) onto company property as condition of employment, then don't do it. If this issue is significant enough to any given person, he or she is going to just have to find another place to work.

I'm an employer. I'm absolutely opposed to what I consider pornography in any form. I consider Playboy magazine to be pornography. If you have a Playboy locked in the trunk of your car in my parking lot you're fired. Whaddya think?

Or this. I'm a believer in a pure body (this is not from any organized religion, mind you, just my personally developed belief.) As such I an opposed to any non-natural item that someone might consume. Therefore, if you have a bottle of aspirin or a can of Pepsi (artificial sweeteners, you know) in the trunk of your car in my parking lot, you're fired.

Extreme examples, of course. But in each case we're talking about lawfully possessed objects which remain in the exclusive control of the employee (locked in the car) but to which the employer takes some personal offense. While I can see the employer's side of the argument to the extent a prohibition relates to the actual work premises (don't bring your gun - or your aspirin - to your desk) I cannot see any legitimate employer interest in regulating the (legal) contents of a private automobile.

Even recognizing the arguable right of a property owner to absolute control over the use of his property, there is an overriding public interest in permitting citizens to be armed - it deters violent crime by raising the stakes for the criminal. An employer who forbids arms on his property undercuts this public interest, by guaranteeing criminals that an identifiable group will be unarmed - employees who have left the parking lot and have not yet returned home to pick up a gun.

Missouri's recently passed CCW law expressly permits weapons in cars pretty much everywhere except federal exclusion zones. (You don't even need a permit to have a concealed weapon in your car - you just have to be over 23.) Each subsection that lists an exception to where concealed carry is allowed (bars, government buildings, schools, etc.) has an express provision that the exception does not apply to concealed weapons in a car in the parking lot. Employers may prohibit concealed carry in vehicles that the employer owns. The law is a bit vague on employers forbidding concealed weapons in employee cars (they expressly can NOT forbid them in non-employee cars) but it is at least arguable that they can't place employees in any worse position than the public when it comes to the parking lot.

As I look at it, my car is an enclosed space of my property, and as such, it is no one's business as to what I keep in my own car. If they don't want firearms on their premesis, then that is their business, but they have no right to tell me what can and cannot be in MY vehicle. If it is company provided then... well that sucks, 'cause then it is their vehicle.

wrangler and windaria make some good points.
Jeff your failure to take a stand on this disappoints me. What if the employer told you that if you had gay literature in your car, you're fired?

Correction timmy,
wrangler and windaria make some good points that those positions (and by extension those of banning guns in the employers parking lot) are stupid (it ain't hard because, well... they are).

However, people have the right to be stupid.

There is no difference between the property I own for use for my business and the property I own for use for my home. If I said I didn't want any (insert ridiculous item) on my property and I found out said item was in your car, I have every right to kick you off my property for it. If you don't like the rules, you can find a new employer and I can find a new employee. You have no right to *a* job, much less mine. You have a right to possess your property, but you don't have a right to bring your property onto mine.

Note: The above (if I actually adhered to any of it) would make me a dispicable, idiotic asshole. But as I said earlier, you have the right to be a dispicable idiotic asshole.

Correction for myself:

Not adhered (because I do), but enforced (which I don't/wouldn't).

I too am torn. My car is MY property: but if I drive it onto someone else's private property, they do have rights which I think are overriding - even if I do not care for the way they implement those rights. My right to swing my arm for exercise ends at (before, actually) your nose, OK? But your overriding right not to be hit (with a lawsuit, probably the real concern of the companies) does not mean I should be kept from exercising as I walk into or out of a room where you are standing.

Maybe a compromise: a company which can afford to have a parking lot can probably also afford to have a guarded bunch of small lockers that could handle the usual rifle, shotgun, pistol, hunting knife, bow, crossbow, whatever. Or, of course, a law that hold innocent bystanders (e.g., the company) innocent - nah, that would never pass.