Worker Right or Workplace Danger?
Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Jason Smith is in a tough spot. He works for a company he has been asked to boycott.

In an effort to keep weapons out of the workplace, his employer, ConocoPhillips, is challenging state law and has forbidden workers to leave guns in their cars in company parking lots. Now, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is encouraging gun owners to stop buying ConocoPhillips gasoline.

The boycott is the latest skirmish in an expanding battle over gun control. Now that many states allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, the NRA is pushing to eliminate remaining restrictions on where those guns can be taken. Gun-control groups – and some employers – are fighting back. The outcome could decide whether more states expand the rights of licensed owners to carry their guns where they want, despite recent evidence that workplace gun bans do lower risk.

This issue is simmering in states across the country, says Stephen Halbrook, a Virginia lawyer who handles many Second Amendment cases. “But it is in brightest relief in Oklahoma.”

That’s because Oklahoma is one of only two states with statutes that specifically prohibit employers from banning weapons on their own property. (Kentucky is the other state.) ConocoPhillips and several other employers are challenging the 2003 Oklahoma law in federal court.

“ConocoPhillips supports the Second Amendment and respects the rights of law abiding citizens to own guns,” the Houston-based oil company says in a written statement. “Our primary concern is the safety of all our employees. We are simply trying to provide a safe and secure working environment for our employees by keeping guns out of our facilities, including our company parking lots.”

But gun-control opponents see the issue in constitutional terms. [Text continued at site.]

Constitutional terms? What about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which many gun owners (and, to be fair, non-gun owners) have gleefully told me was almost phrased as “life, liberty and property”? Presumably, ConocoPhillips either owns the property or has tenant rights on the property. In North Carolina, at least, property owners and those with tenant rights have an absolute right to forbid any sort of weapons on the property, regardless of the nature, status or location of the weapon. If the cars are parked in the ConocoPhillips parking lot, they’re on the ConocoPhillips property. Ergo, ConocoPhillips is exercising its right to control of its own property. What is un-Constitutional about that? (For that matter, just how Constitutional is the Oklahoma law anyway?)