Posted by
Jonathan Cooke on Monday, August 20, 2007 3:48:18 PM
Your Rights End when the Parking Lot Begins.
Imagine, if you will, the proverbial ‘little old lady’ driving in her car fresh from an invigorating Sunday church service. On her way home to reflect on the pastor’s sermon she stops by her local grocery store for a half-gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. As she exits her vehicle she hums to herself one of her favorite hymns. It’s ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and the tune is recognized by the alert ears of a store employee collecting shopping carts. “Ma’am, are you coming from church this morning? You wouldn’t happen to have a Bible in your vehicle would you?” Well certainly, I’m sure she would proclaim. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the parking lot. Please leave immediately. If you fail to do so I will contact the police, have you arrested, and prosecuted.”
Absolutely ridiculous, you say? Well if the parking lot is located in Florida, this scenario is not only possible, but also completely legal according to the position of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. It’s more than likely this could apply to your State as well. For Florida, the Chamber of Commerce is thoroughly convinced that private property laws supersede Constitutional rights. Florida Senate Bill SB-2356 and Florida House bill HB-1417 were introduced early in the 2007 legislative session to prohibit business owners from banning any legal personal property from automobiles while those vehicles are in the business’ parking lots. Let me say that again, with emphasis, “any legal personal property”. These bills, intended as an affirmation of your already existent rights in order to prevent abuses of those rights, were shot down with so much red faced vein-popping vitriol you might have expected legislature’s fists and teeth to be flying. They nearly were.
If you didn’t already know, you may have spotted the telling ripples of some shadowy and hideous beast lurking beneath the surface of the attack on this clarifying legislation. It’s barely even hiding, you can clearly see its sharpened fangs glistening from within its maniacal rictus of a grin. It’s the anti-gun lobby, or to adopt the predictable habits of their parlance, “Big Anti-Gun”.
“What do guns have to do with Bibles? They’re probably only trying to prohibit guns aren’t they?” (And I do shudder at using the term “only” within that sentence, being an avid gun enthusiast and owner myself.) Therein is the pinnacle of this slippery slope though. No matter which side of the fence you might sit on regarding legal gun ownership there is a great danger to all once private businesses believe themselves to have the ability to prohibit any such items as they should see fit from your legal possession, and furthermore conduct searches for such possessions within your securely locked private automobile, and with the sheer unmitigated audacity to proclaim that the authority to do so was granted to them merely by your driving into their parking lot.
“You’re sensationalizing! That would never actually happen!” Tell that to the ex-employees of the Weyerhaeuser paper mill, Valliant Oklahoma, which is considered a test case prompting the Florida legislation. On October 1st, 2002, as a result of an employee drug overdose the management of the mill questionably brought in drug-sniffing dogs to conduct a search of employee automobiles within their parking lot. Although searching for drugs the dogs brought in had actually been cross-trained to also search for explosives and firearms. During the drug search the dogs identified legally owned firearms within the vehicles of 12 employees. Although being in completely legal possession those 12 employees were subsequently terminated 2 days later on October 3rd. The reasoning being that the company stated it has a policy against firearms within vehicles on their parking lot, and they saw their own private policy as prevailing over both Federal laws and State laws that permitted those employees to legally own and posses those firearms no matter where they were parked. Did I say legally possessed firearms? I’ll utter the overwhelmingly mitigating, nay, policy negating point once again that the firearms were legally possessed.
This should disturb you. If a parking lot can strip you of your Constitutional rights, gun owner or not, you might worry about what other rights you might be nonchalantly stripped of if the removal of those rights is so ardently defended and so readily permitted to endure. Perhaps the loss of the 13th Amendment would be of concern if, upon driving into a business parking lot, you find yourself sold into slavery. The loss of the right to free speech, trial by jury, the right to vote, freedom of religion? Regardless of which particular right the suppression of might personally affect you most, the suppression of any of them at all is something that I truly hope causes you grievous concern.
Are you sure they sabotaged protection of personal private property rights? Is that really what the bill was protecting? Read it for yourself, it is a matter of public record. The Florida Senate has the text of the undermined bill online at Flsenate.gov and you’ll be looking for the “Individual Personal Private Property Protection Act of 2007”, Senate Bill SB-2356 (c1), which was stabbed to death on the floor of the Senate, in a manner reminiscent of Caesar, on May 4th, 2007. The corresponding House bill was garroted and left to a floundering death on April 18th, 2007. You can witness the timeline of its birth and demise online at the myFloridaHouse.gov website.
“Well, it’s still just a typical knee-jerk reaction, they’ve only applied this to guns, not Bibles.” Even if you are avidly against legal possession of firearms yourself, I beg you to consider that there can be nothing so permanent as a temporary suspension of your rights. If you do not fervently defend your rights now, then when will you? After they have been whittled away from you in entirety? When that proverbial ‘little old lady’ is hauled away under armed guard? The world you live in tomorrow will be decided by what you believe in and stand for today. Choose wisely.
Jonathan RF Cooke
August 20th, 2007
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