VIEWPOINT
Standing up for individual rights
by Marion P. Hammer NRA Past President Unified Sportsmen of Florida Executive Director

Florida citizens have the constitutional right to keep and bear arms for self-protection and Florida law specifically guarantees the right to transport and carry firearms in private vehicles for lawful purposes. Those rights are well established in law and in public policy.

Yet some corporate giants are violating those individual rights, claiming a constitutional right to control business property, when no such blanket right exists. Corporate lobbyists have even claimed businesses have the right to ban any personal property inside private vehicles from "guns" to "Bibles" to "bananas." That is nonsense.

Government, at all levels, heavily regulates business property use from zoning to building codes to public accommodations and laws against bigotry and discrimination. This is no different.

SB-206 and HB-129 were filed to protect the individual, constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens. The legislation does not interfere with the employer-employee relationship except to stop illegal searches of private vehicles and protect employees, who want to exercise a constitutional right, from abusive anti-gun corporations bent upon discriminating against them.

The right to transport and carry firearms in a vehicle means you can store that firearm locked in your vehicle in a parking lot when you go grocery shopping, to the doctor's office, to a movie, to visit a sick friend in the hospital, to the dry cleaners, to the shoe store or anywhere else people commonly travel.

Constitutional rights do not end, and, indeed must not, when you drive into a commercial parking lot. And business practices and policies do not supersede the constitutional or statutory rights of individual customers and employees.

Courts have ruled that "an atwill employee may not be terminated for exercising constitutional rights." But big businesses in Florida are trying to place themselves above the law and above the Constitution. And, tragically, some are reported to have executed searches of private vehicles and fired employees for exercising a constitutional right.

This bill stops that illegal, abusive, and clearly unconstitutional conduct.

The cold hard truth is, gun free parking lots are safe havens for criminals. Businesses that ban guns in private vehicles in parking lots are placing the lives of their customers and employees in danger. That conduct is reprehensible and must be prohibited.

Passage of SB-206 and HB129 would put an end to corporate giants trampling the Freedom of law-abiding citizens who take responsibility for their own safety and by its practices, extorting employees by forcing them to chose between their jobs or their lives.