Maine Senate, House OK concealed guns on workplace grounds

[RamboLiberal]

The Maine Senate on Thursday voted in support of a bill that would make it illegal for employers to ban concealed weapons permit holders from keeping guns hidden in locked vehicles in their workplace parking lots.

The 19-15 vote ended a morning debate over LD 35 that pitted the rights of private property owners against the rights of people to carry guns.

“If I want to carry a gun, I will,” said Sen. David Trahan, a Waldoboro Republican and concealed weapons permit holder who argued that guns are already present at or around many places of employment. “This will not change anything that’s currently going on.”

Supporters also said allowing the guns to be locked away in a car in an employer’s parking lot would not diminish workplace safety. It’s the person, not the gun, that commits a violent act, they explained.

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/09/politics/senate-house-ok-concealed-guns-on-workplace-grounds/

[HockeyMom]

1. Does this open the door

to private personal property, as in, if an individual homeowners doesn't want gun toting people on their property, can they prohibit them? If these laws are allowing guns on the private proptery of workplaces, is it that far a reach that the other be will next?

[Tesha]

2. Essentially, you no longer have any private property rights to ban the gun without also banning...

...the gunner.

The 2nd Amendment trumps all your other rights.

Tesha

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[petronius]

11. In the case of the parking lot, it's a conflict between the property rights of the employer,

and the privacy and property rights of the employee. The car is viewed - quite reasonably, IMO - as the private space of the employee over which the employer has no interest or control. It really doesn't limit your right to exclude guns from your home or inside the workplace itself...

[one-eyed fat man]

3. Don't worry!

Make yourself a button...



Crooks really won't care.

[HockeyMom]

4. Minus the inside of that

I have seen those on homeowners lawns, in Florida. I guess that says something about Florida, doesn't it?

[one-eyed fat man]

20. You have high expectations...

Doubtless, they will leave....

[gejohnston]

26. Yes it does

Let's just say I doubt you would ever see it in Peoria. It reminds me of Carl Hiaasen once said that 911 would not have happened the hijackers went to a flying school in Minnesota. Basically that a bunch of guys wanting to learn how to steer while in flight, but no interested in take off and landing, would attract attention. Since they came to Florida, no one found it odd.

[rrneck]

9. I think the distinction

would be something like: people have to go to work. So if you are required to be someplace, the person who requires you to be there cannon simultaneously determine what you can have in the vehicle you have to use to get there.

[petronius]

12. I think it is a reach, actually. There is quite a lot of law and history around how an employer

and an employee relate, and what rights the employer has with regard to the employer. (Some of it quite bad, IMO, particularly in the area of employers searching the persons - inside and out - of the worker.)

None of that applies to truly private interactions: you can exclude whomever and whatever you want from your own space, for whatever reason, and this law doesn't do anything to change that...

[Euromutt]

16. I don't see why it should

This doesn't apply to "toting" firearms at all. We're talking about individuals keeping a firearm "hidden in locked vehicles" that are their personal property, while that personal property is parked on the employer's parking lot. The closest analogous situation for a homeowner would be if a cleaning woman, landscaper, plumber etc. kept a CCW pistol hidden inside his or her locked car, van or truck, while it was parked on the homeowner's driveway.

[krispos42]

17. Good question.

If a friend of yours comes over to your house for dinner and parks his car in your driveway, do you have the right to search his car if you suspect there's a gun in it? I don't think so, but you could ask him/her to leave. He/she is a guest, after all, not an employee, and you can ask that person to leave for any reason or none. Race, gender, sexuality, last name, eye color... the choice is yours.


But claiming the right to inspect an employee's car (or firing them for refusing to allow an inspection) is quite a bit different.

[TheWraith]

18. A workplace is not exactly private property in the strictest sense. There are gradations.

A workplace owner can't, say, strut around naked in the office. They can't hang swastikas on the walls. They can't put video cameras in the bathrooms. They can't do a wide range of things which are viewed as impinging on the rights of their employees, things that you could do at, say, your home.

[slackmaster]

23. The point is that the interior of your parked, locked car is YOUR private space, no matter where...

...the car is parked.

[slackmaster]

22. No, but it opens the door to allowing people to keep PORNOGRAPHY in their parked, locked cars

Anywhere, any time.

:evilgrin:

[msongs]

5. the words "well regulated" are meaningless to the gun crowd even tho they are in the 2A nt

[eqfan592]

8. Those words have plenty of meaning to us...

...they just don't happen to mean what you wish they did. Must suck for you to have that pesky reality getting in your way.

[petronius]

14. What do you think "well regulated" meant when the BOR was written?

Actually, the way you seem to interpret the 2nd, it makes no sense: 'because a free state needs a militia with lots of rules, there shall be no rules infringing the people's right to own guns.' :shrug:

[rrneck]

15. Y'know

reading involves more than understanding just one word at a time.

[GreenStormCloud]

19. You can quite beating that horse. It is waaaaay past dead. N/T

[provis99]

6. just like its the person, not the alcohol, that made the person drunk.

:eyes:

[eqfan592]

10. Actually...

...it's the person choosing to ingest an excessive amount of alcohol that makes the person drunk. Alcohol doesn't just leap into somebodies mouth unbidden, generally speaking.

[Glassunion]

21. "Alcohol doesn't just leap into somebodies mouth unbidden" Or really??

Someone has not been to a frat party in a while.

[eqfan592]

24. Well, I did say "generally speaking" ;) nt

[Name removed]

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[spin]

25. In Florida we have had that law since 2008 ...

blood is still not flowing in the workplace or the parking lots.

[jpak]

27. Maine GOP/MORANS want guns in other people's workplaces - but not theirs

They did nor pass the companion stoopid GOP/NRA gun bill that would have allowed guns in the State House.

Fucking Cowards and Hypocrites

yup

[petronius]

28. Does the bill that was passed cover the employee parking lots of state-owned buildings?