The House of Delegates passed a bill last week ensuring that employees, customers, tenants and other Virginians can store their guns in a locked vehicle on a public parking lot.
House Bill 171, approved on a 72-27 vote, says, “No person, property owner, tenant,employer, or business entity shall maintain, establish, or enforce any policy or rule that has the effect of prohibiting a person who may lawfully possess a firearm from storing a firearm locked in or locked to a firearms rack in a motor vehicle in a parking lot, parking space, or other similar property set aside for motor vehicles.”
Currently, employers and property owners have the right to bar employees or other people from leaving a handgun in a car in their parking lot.
“Our Second Amendment rights should not be taken away because we decide to park in a parking lot to go to a business,” said the bill’s sponsor, Delegate Brenda Pogge, R-Yorktown.
However, some business owners raised issues involving safety and property rights.
“Business owners ought to regulate and determine the conduct of their employees and customers in a reasonable fashion,” said Keith Cheatham of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
Employers are also concerned that having guns on the premises raises the potential for workplace violence.
In 2007, Virginia had 15 shooting-related workplace fatalities, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
However, David Adams, president of the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, said gun owners won’t cause problems by leaving their weapons in their cars.
“Most law-abiding gun owners are not going to do that, especially concealed gun owners that are already not committing crimes,” Adams said.
Virginia has not had a known case of an employee being fired for having a gun in his car while at work. However, firings have happened in other states.
As a result, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma have adopted laws similar to HB 171. The National Rifle Associations is pushing the legislation at statehouses nationwide.
The idea for such laws originated in Oklahoma, where eight employees of a company were fired for having handguns in their car while at work.
Oklahoma then passed a law to prevent such terminations. This year, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law as constitutional. A Florida court ruled the law there to be constitutional as well.
Some Virginia business owners fear HB 171 could cause headaches.
“From a loss prevention perspective to property rights, we’re living in difficult times,” said Laurie Aldrich, president of the Virginia Retail Merchants Association.
HB 171 would provide civil immunity to employers, property owners, business owners and others.
“No person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity shall be liable in any civil action for any occurrence that results from or is connected to the use of a firearm that was lawfully stored” in a locked parked car, the bill says.
Cheatham from the chamber said HB 171 would infringe on business owners’ property rights.
“If I don’t want to have people with guns in their car come to my property, the General Assembly doesn’t have the business to tell me,” he said.
At least one business owner – Fahs Wood of Martin and Wood Construction in Richmond – doesn’t see it that way.
“I don’t see how this infringes on my rights as an employer,” Woof said. “It’s their car, not mine.”
The legislation would affect other Virginia employers such as Dominion, one of the nation’s largest energy producers. Dominion, like a majority of employers in the area, currently prohibits employees from keeping a gun in their car while at work, company spokesman Mark Lazenby said.
A bill similar to HB 171 was introduced in 2006 by Delegate L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge. It passed the House but was defeated in the Senate.
Nice photo from Falling Down.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/
“Nice photo from Falling Down. ”
Yeah, no bias there!
We finally get smoking out of bars in the interest of “public health,” but now you can bring guns to work and to the bar with you afterwards? One step forward and four steps back.
If you feel the necessity to bring a gun to work, it might be time to consider a career change.
>> If you feel the necessity to bring a gun to work, it might be time to consider a career change. <<
How about if I just want to take my son or granddaughter hunting right after work and don't have time to go home and change and get my shotgun? Why would that require me to change my career?
Better to bring your gun to work than your children. Children run all over the place and you have to watch them constantly. Your gun stays in your glove compartment. You don’t have to yell at it to sit down and be quiet. You always know where it is.
Seriously, I gotta disagree with my good friend Keith Cheatham here. The government doesn’t have the right to tell the owner of a legally registered firearm that they can’t carry that weapon where they like. And I believe the law says the gun will be locked in the car at all times while on the property. A person has a right to be protected and the police cannot be everywhere.
With the overwhelming number of critical issues facing our legislature, the time and energy (and lobby dollars) being spent on this issue stupifies me. We are unemployed with staggering healthcare costs which render us unable to compete in a global marketplace and our cars could fall in the potholes on our state roads and disappear. (which by the way, mine actually has, and now our road is closed for the next 6 months). But our elected officials want to be sure we can carry our guns. I suppose that this is so when we can’t look after our sick children, feed them or pay for their education since we are unemployed, we can sit in the parking lot and shoot ourselves with the guns we have the right to carry. The only concern then, is will we have enough police and emergency response funding to have someone respond to the call and clean up the resulting mess. I for one, am so relieved my gun rights are intact. It will keep the ligation field fully employed when angry employees or disgruntled spouses can show up legally in a business parking area and business owner can be sued for not providing adequate security.
The article is misleading because it doesn’t show some of they key exceptions. Read them for yourself – here is a link to the bill (fairly short) that passed the House:
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?101+ful+HB171H1
Here are the exceptions:
D. This section shall not apply to (i) property on which a person is prohibited from possessing a firearm by § 18.2-308.1; (ii) vehicles on property (a) to which access is restricted or limited through the use of a gate, security station, or other means of restricting or limiting general access onto the property; or (b) upon which a building occupied by a single employer and its affiliated entities is located and in which access to the building is restricted or limited by card access, a security station, or other means of restricting or limiting general public access into the building; (iii) vehicles owned or leased by an employer or business entity and used by an employee in the course of his employment; or (iv) personal vehicles while such vehicles are being used for the transport of consumers of programs licensed by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services; (v) vehicles on property controlled by an employer required to develop and implement a security plan under federal law or regulation.
With the erasure of its well-regulated militia clause, the Second Amendment has been neatly remodeled into a marketing slogan. Gun sales should continue to soar.
The article states “Employers are also concerned that having guns on the premises raises the potential for workplace violence.” I make a statement for the contrary. Anyone who doesn’t see value in preserving the ideals of our 2nd Amendment has not considered that there has been, and always will be people out there who simply do not care about other people. By restricting gun carry rules all you are doing is lessening the chance that a law-abiding citizen will have a firearm to protect all of the sheep out there that don’t believe in owning guns. Go ahead detractors; make your obligatory “how about just calling the police,” remark. You do that, and see how long it can take for them to respond, and then time that against how long it takes for a law abiding citizen with a concealed carry permit who knows how to use it to respond. Crooks and evildoers don’t care about laws, good citizens do. Stop de-arming the law-abiding American! You are making it too easy on the bad people of this country! Glad to see good sense prevailed in this case.
lo siento,pero pienso
My car, no matter where it is parked is an extension of my home. And if we give the business owner the right to dictate what I can have in my car, should he also be able to dictate what I have in my home?
Just FYI… currently as I write this there is a hostage and shooting situation still going on at the Discovery Channel headquarters over in Maryland. If that were here, especially under this bill, you’d have several law-abiding, responsible people that could defend their fellow coworkers–including those who think guns should be banned from law-abiding citizens. Something to think about. Oh yeah, and by the way, these kinds of things rarely happen here in VA for that same reason–we can have guns Maryland can’t.