Essay on employee parking lot laws

[seamusTX]

This essay on a site for human resources executives illustrates the thinking of the "other side':

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp? ... =134856405" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I want to point out one significant abuse of statistics:

... between 1980 and 2006, there were 16,454 homicides -- approximately 663 a year -- by shooting in the workplace.

First, note the time frame of 27 years, which inflates the number of incidents and includes a couple of exceptionally bad years in the 1980s -- more than 20 years ago.

Second, probably 90% of these homicides were retail robberies. Most of the rest were domestic violence that spilled into the workplace, because deranged ex-husbands and "boyfriends" knew that they could find the woman there.

Shootings of coworkers number fewer than 10 a year, on average.

Check out the list of tactics for avoiding state laws that allow employees to keep firearms in their vehicles in parking lots.

I hope that the TSRA and our friends in the Lege take this into account when formulating bills next year.

- Jim

[mr.72]

I wrote this letter to the editor:

Dear Editor:

I was dismayed to read Mr. Anelli's "Firearms at Work" article after being directed to it by a friend. The position Mr. Anelli takes is fallacious and dangerous for a number of reasons.

The primary fallacy is that somehow restricting the legal ownership of guns locked in cars is going to reduce the illegal use of guns to commit violence on an employer's property. There is not one shred of evidence to support such a position and it is not rooted in any logic.

For example, many well-known cases of shootings of fellow employees in the workplace involve post offices. As you may be aware, post offices are Federal property and the possession of guns on this property by employees, customers or anyone else other than law enforcement officers is forbidden in every post office in the nation regardless of whether the employer has applied signs or other policies restricting firearms. Yet it is clear, even a Federal law prohibiting guns in workplaces does nothing to actually prevent those intent on committing crime from entering the workplace and shooting their coworkers.

The second fallacy repeated in this article is that prohibitions on legal gun ownership and the legal carrying of guns will enhance safety. In fact there is no actual evidence that this is true and this fallacy also fails the logical test. Denying one the right to defend themselves with equal force to that of the violent criminal does not make one more safe.

You see, every position that Mr. Anelli took in this article encourages the continuance of these flaws in reason. It is quite simple: no person who is intent on committing violence using a gun, any other weapon, or even their own hands, is going to be stopped magically by a company policy. Murder is illegal in all states, whether it is on an employee's parking lot or not. Yet somehow murder still happens. It is only by dismissing reason that one could conclude that an employer's policy is going to have greater force of persuasion than the law towards the violent criminal.

The fact is that it is a violation of privacy not only for an employer to ask if an employee is carrying a gun in their car, but also it is similarly a violation of privacy to even ask if they are carrying a gun on their person. There is no other property whose ownership is protected by the Constitution besides guns. It would be more Constitutional to deny an employee the right to wear clothing at work than to deny them their right to carry a gun. The bearing of arms equips people in their basic human right to defend their own life, and therefore to basic survival. When you deny me the right to legally carry a gun at work, much less to store one in my car, then you deny me the means by which to defend my own life. The statistics Mr. Anelli pointed out in his essay illustrate this point extremely well. According to these statistics, the workplace is a reasonably violent place where an employee should reasonably expect to encounter violent crime. This is a powerful reason that employees forced into such an environment should not be stripped of their means to defend themselves against such violence.

Regards,
Mr. 72

[seamusTX]

Thanks. Good letter. Maybe it will get someone thinking.

- Jim

[mr.72]

They added my letter to the reader comments.

[seamusTX]

Congratulations. I think yours was the best of those that they published.

In the future, you might want to refer to the work of Gary Kleck and John Lott. Prof. Kleck is particularly notable, as he is a liberal according to any definition of the word. He examined the available statistics on firearms ownership and crime, and came to the conclusion that "gun control" does not work, despite his prejudices.

- Jim

[WarHawk-AVG]

I emailed your letter to several editors at that rag

[mr.72]

Looks like my letter appears twice, once with someone else's name on it!

[Purplehood]

Imitation is the best form of flattery...I stole that you know.

[WarHawk-AVG]

Looks like my letter appears twice, once with someone else's name on it!

That was me...I apologize...I am ultra lousy at writing effective messages...yours said everything I wanted to say but soooo much more eliquently

I screwed up and shouldn't have sent the exact same letter you did

I didn't realize she would have put both the same letters up..I just wanted to repeatedly hit their email inbox to let them know that what they had written was improper and out of context

Should I go ahead and ask them to remove the duplicate with my name on it?

[mr.72]

No I figured it was you.

Frankly I think that this post on the TX CHL forum has probably quadrupled their normal traffic on that site. Who reads that anyway?