NEWS
ASIS Supports Property Owner Right to Prohibit Firearms
09/25/2009 -
CORRECTION: This is to correct an earlier post that was in error. ASIS supports a private property owner's right to prohibit firearms on that private property. To that end, ASIS opposes state laws that would prohibit employers from having policies banning firearms from parking areas of their privately owned premises. The prior news item wrongly stated that ASIS opposes blanket firearm bans on company property.
The item also wrongly stated the NRA position. The National Rifle Association is behind passage of these laws.
Security Management apologizes for any confusion the earlier post may have caused.
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Comments
Competing Rights: Property Isn't the Only Right
Property rights, like other rights, have accountabilities. If you slip and fall on a property, the owner is accountable. If a company policy disarms you, the company should be held responsible to protect you from the harm which it has made you unable to defend against. At work, on the drive home, etc.--even at home if you haven't been able to get inside and to your defensive instrument.
And what enforcements of parking lot gun ban policies is ASIS willing to support? Intrusive vehicle searches? What about the car owner's property rights? I don't think it works to argue that those property rights are forfeit when the personal property is transported onto another's real property, any more than are rights to life and liberty.
Then, when one takes into account the various laws that already limit property owners' rights--such as laws against discrimination, harrassment, certain unsavory management styles, etc.--one sees that, right or wrong, the courts and legislatures have decided that property is not the absolute right that the parking-lot-gun-ban companies want it to be.
Also, experience shows that bans are followed by the law-abiding; the lawbreakers do what they want anyway. Witness Lockheed's Meridian, GA massacre a few years ago.
All that said, it really doesn't make moral, legal, security or even business sense to support the parking lot bans. Maybe if employers can't use blunt instrument (but cheap and easy--might look good even if it doesn't do any good) tools like these, they'll get on with doing what they should have done in the first place: assuring that entry points are actually guarded. Hmm. Imagine that.