Opposition frames this as property owner’s rights vs gun rights.  Reality check: the issue pits employee’s property and personal rights vs employer’s rights.  Work rule banning guns from employee’s car in employer’s parking lot extends far beyond the workplace, and cannot be shown to improve workplace safety.  Here in Tennessee, our Chamber of Commerce is lining up against us based on the employer’s property right to exclude firearms from the lot.  I say there’s more to it:

Dear Deb:

I am an attorney who defends employers every day.  I teach seminars to employer clients–not to lawyers–on how to bolster defenses against employment litigation, and how to guard their freedom to select their workforce.  I also thank my legislators for advancing safe commute legislation.  I was dismayed to read your own position, which, I infer, is the Chamber’s position.

The employer’s property right interest is not the only property owner’s right at stake in the issue.  To view this as employer property rights versus employee’s second amendment rights only misses the fact that property rights on both sides clash.  When the employer bans firearms from its parking lots, the work-rule affects the employee’s use of the employee’s property (car and firearm) off-premises as well.  SB3002/HB3560, the Employee Safe Commute Bill, does not ignore the property owner’s dominion; it does, however, balance important competing rights in favor of personal, individual liberty.

What finally swayed me in favor of the employee’s right to use the employee’s property to advance the employee’s personal safety is that a work-rule banning guns from parking lots has ramifications far beyond the employer’s property.  The practical effect of the rule is to strip the employee of the right to choose a known effective means of self-defense throughout the commute: on the road, at the convenience store, and arriving home, sometimes well after dark, and in the early hours of the morning.  Further, such a work rule cannot credibly be argued to achieve any employer safety goal: it is obvious to all that the ex-employee, or employee, or deranged relative  or stranger bent on murder may easily ignore such a rule.  Also, I can already foresee the plaintiff’s lawyer’s Complaint, suing the employer for wrongful death because the employee’s angry ex-lover waylaid the disarmed employee pulling into the driveway after the work shift.

The legislative and regulatory overlay burdening employers in other realms of law far outweighs the non-existent burden of permitting citizen-employees the right of effective self-defense off the premises, during the commute.  If your wish is to tout Tennessee as a place where businesses are freed from burdensome government, many are the targets begging for our aim.  I could suggest a few.