"The great object is that every man be armed ... everyone who is able may have a gun."
-- Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution
SB 67 (the "parking-lot bill" sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen) is a bill that enhances self-defense rights in Utah. GOUtah! supports this bill. It passed the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee on Tuesday and now goes to the floor of the Senate, where all senators will get to vote on it. We ask that you contact your own state senator as soon as you can, and encourage him to support SB 67. Please go to the Action Item at the end of this alert for details.
Tuesday’s committee vote on SB 67 was as follows:
For: Senators Buttars, Hickman, Jenkins, and Knudson
Against: Senators Romero and McCoy
Here’s a longer description of SB 67, if you're interested:
Several years ago, two employees of America Online (AOL) in northern Utah were fired because AOL management found out that these employees had kept firearms locked in the trunks of their cars one day, which were parked in the employee parking area. Even though these employees were not in violation of any gun laws (as far as we know), AOL has a policy that prohibits employees from keeping firearms in their cars while at work. In this case, if we recall correctly, AOL didn’t even own the parking lot, but was leasing it from someone else.
Since that time, GOUtah! has periodically received e-mail from readers who have been told by their employers that they will be fired it they get caught with a firearm at work, even if the firearm is 100% legal and even if it’s kept locked and out of sight in their motor vehicle in the company parking lot. Most of these folks tell us that they have concealed-weapon permits but that their employer won’t let them carry a weapon in the workplace. Their next-best option is to keep their weapon locked in their car while they’re at work, so that at least they can have access to it during their commute, but their bosses won’t even let them do that.
SB 67 basically changes the state’s liability laws to prohibit companies from having these sorts of parking-lot gun bans.
If your employer tells you that you can be fired for having a legal firearm at work, even if the firearm is locked in your parked car, your employer is actually requiring you to be defenseless from the time you leave home in the morning to the time you get home at night, while you’re commuting and while you’re filling up your car at the gas station and while you’re at the bank to deposit your paycheck and while you’re at the grocery store on your way home from work and while you’re dining at a restaurant for lunch. Believe it or not, a number of employers in Utah have such gun bans, which extend to firearms locked in parked cars. One excuse given by some of these employers is that they don’t want to be held liable in the event that a gun taken from a parked car gets misused. SB 67 would, among other things, do away with this excuse by shielding employers and other parking-lot owners from such liability, provided that they don’t ban the secure storage of legal firearms in parked cars. Another excuse that’s often used, and which is of course ridiculous, is that by banning legally possessed self-defense weapons in parked cars, the workplace is made safer. Given the fact that nearly all shooting sprees take place in "gun-free" zones, and given the fact that the kind of person who engages in a shooting spree is not the kind of person who is going to obey a gun ban imposed by his employer, we find this sort of rationale to be completely silly.
SB 67 prohibits the private owner or lessee of a parking area from prohibiting you from keeping a gun in your car while it’s parked there, provided that the gun is hidden from view and provided that either the car is locked or the gun is kept in a locked container inside the vehicle or in a locked container attached to the vehicle (such as a locking toolbox in the bed of a pickup truck) during the time that the vehicle is unoccupied, and provided that the firearm is legally possessed by you (i.e., that it’s not stolen, that you’re not prohibited by law from possessing firearms, etc.). Note that it’s already legal for you to have a gun in your car when it’s parked in a privately owned parking lot, as long as you’re legally in possession of the firearm and as long as you’re transporting it in a manner that’s compliant with state law. But there’s currently nothing in the law to prevent your employer, for example, from firing you for having a gun in your car.
SB 67 also extends to parking areas used by customers of businesses, although we have not yet heard of a retail business that prohibits customers from having guns in their cars in the parking lot. Under Utah’s existing trespassing statute, at least to the degree that we understand it, it would probably be difficult for the owner of a retail business to evict a customer from his property for having a concealed firearm on his person or in his car during business hours, unless the business owner could prove in court that the presence of a concealed weapon somehow interfered with the normal operation of his business. Thus, retailers don’t really have an effective way to enforce a parking-lot gun ban against customers. Nonetheless, this is the sort of thing that might require a test case in court to make it clear. SB 67 would eliminate the need for such a test case by explicitly forbidding retailers from having parking-lot gun bans.
However, the main impetus for SB 67 remains the issue of parking-lot gun bans enacted by employers, who currently enforce such bans by threatening to fire or discipline employees who violate them.
SB 67 modifies the state’s liability laws so that, as long as a parking lot owner or lessee does not have such a gun ban, he is shielded from liability in the event that a firearm is taken from a parked car and used illegally. At the same time, if the owner or lessee enacts a gun ban in a parking lot in violation of SB 67, he loses this protection while also becoming liable for damages in the event that someone using the parking lot can claim injury (physical or otherwise) from such a policy. Thus, for example, if you’re assaulted on your way home from work and you don’t have a self-defense weapon available to you at the time because your boss won’t let you keep one in your car while you’re at work, your boss can be held liable. Also, as we interpret the bill, if your boss fires you or disciplines you because he finds out that you keep your firearm locked in your car at work, your boss can be held liable for firing or disciplining you and you can collect damages. You wouldn’t even have to file the lawsuit yourself. SB 67 authorizes the Attorney General to bring the suit on your behalf, although you would still have the option of filing suit yourself in the event that Utahns elect an anti-gun Attorney General in the future.
SB 67 does not cover parking lots operated by state and local government entities, simply because state and local government entities are already prohibited from having parking-lot gun bans under a separate section of the Utah Code.
If a company absolutely feels that it must ban firearms in its parking lots, SB 67 provides a means for them to do so. The company can fence off the parking lot and have a secure entry point, and provide a weapons-storage locker outside the security perimeter. We understand that a few high-security industrial facilities, such as oil refineries, already do this, and SB 67 would allow them to continue to do so.
Finally, SB 67 exempts religious organizations, and allows them to have parking-lot gun bans.
SB 67 is a self-defense bill. If you’re not able to keep a legal self-defense weapon in your car while it’s parked, this pretty much makes it impossible to have a self-defense weapon with you anytime you’re away from home. Most of us today regard our cars as a sort of "home away from home", and we spend a lot of time in them, and we usually park our cars in various parking lots multiple times each day. In fact, a number of states have essentially extended the "castle doctrine" to people’s cars when it comes to possessing firearms, stating that, at least to a certain degree, "a man’s car is his castle". A number of states allow you to keep a loaded and/or concealed firearm in your car without a permit, just as they allow you to do so in your home (unfortunately, Utah law does not yet allow this in cars). Utah law already acknowledges the "castle doctrine" with regard to private residences, including residences owned by anti-gun landlords. State law explicitly forbids your landlord from telling you that you can’t keep firearms in the house or apartment that you rent from him, even though he owns the property. SB 67 essentially extends this concept (albeit to a limited degree) to include your car when it’s parked in a parking lot that’s owned by someone else, by telling the owner of the parking lot that he can’t prohibit you from having a legal firearm in your car as long as the weapon is properly secured when the car is unoccupied.
While SB 67 is not perfect, we strongly believe that it represents a big improvement over the status quo. We encourage the legislature to pass it as quickly as possible, without any hostile amendments.
To see the current status of SB 67 and to access the full text, [click here].
Please contact your Utah State Senator and encourage him to support SB 67, Senator Mark Madsen’s "parking lot bill". You may send a letter or fax to your senator at the Capitol, or you may leave a
brief message at the Capitol switchboard. Capitol Hill contact info is provided below. Alternatively, you may call your Senator at home in the evening or on the weekend. Or you may e-mail your senator
(though e-mail tends to be less effective than other means of contact). The direct e-mail address and home phone number of your own senator can be found by going to GOUtah!’s [website here].
If you don’t know who your State Senator is, [click here to find out].
"The law is the law. If you get a protection order issued against you, you're not supposed to have firearms.
Before I say pick them all up, I would certainly like something done about those protective orders issued on a whim because they carry with them so much weight to deny a person their lawful right to self-defense."
-- Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, in an article printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 January 2008.
"Liberal newspapers like The Tribune consistently push to restrict gun ownership, such as the recent front-page article that called for the seizure of firearms when a protective order is issued ('Firearms law often shirked,' Tribune, Jan. 21).
Protective orders are easy to obtain. All someone has to do is claim fear or assert that aggressive words were spoken. If no other rights are impacted, the order should be easily issued.
However, this liberal newspaper wants to use such effortlessly obtained orders to seize private property without compensation and to take away the right to possess firearms. Why should constitutional rights be forfeited so easily?
I doubt The Tribune would support the abolition of its First Amendment rights based solely on a person's assertion that The Tribune might print falsehoods about them.
The right to own firearms is as fundamental to this nation's freedom as the freedom of the press. Yet liberals try to use any reason, even the mere claim of fear or possible aggression, to override the constitutional rights to own firearms and to be free from government seizure of private property."
-- Alan Daniel, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 29 January 2008.
Date:
From:
To:
Dear Senator :
As a gun owner and voter living in your State Senate district, I encourage you to vote for SB 67, Senator Mark Madsen’s parking-lot bill. This bill would prohibit employers from banning legally possessed self-defense weapons stored in employees’ parked cars, provided that the weapon is locked in the vehicle and hidden from view.
If my employer prohibits me from having a legally-concealed self-defense weapon while I’m at work, and if this prohibition extends to a weapon that’s locked in the trunk of my parked car, he is actually prohibiting me from having an effective means of self-defense from the time I leave home in the morning until the time I get home at night. This bill is purely a matter of preserving my right to have an effective means of self-defense as I go about my daily business on my way to and from work, during the lunch hour, etc.
SB 67 also modifies the state’s liability laws in a way that’s fair and beneficial to both employers and employees with regard to the secure storage of legal self-defense weapons in parked motor vehicles.
Once the vote on SB 67 has been taken on the floor of the Senate, please get back to me and let me know how you voted.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
That concludes the GOUtah! Political and Legislative Alert #281 for 30 January 2008. We hope this information will be of assistance to you in defending your firearms rights.
Remember that getting this information is meaningless unless You Act On It Today. If you just read it and dump it in the trash, your gun rights, and the gun rights of future generations go in the trash with it. Get involved, get active and get vocal!
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