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Three former Utah-based employees of America Online have sued their ex-employer for firing them. The issue this time, however, is not one of sexual harassment, age discrimination, or some other cause dear to the hearts of statists everywhere. No, this trio of angry men received their pink slips after daring to carry -- and leave -- pistols and rifles in the vehicles they had driven to work and parked in a lot leased by AOL.
Ron Kramer -- one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, Luke Hansen, Jason Melling, and Paul Carlson -- is not seeking to void AOL's right to determine workplace rules. As quoted in an online Standard-Examiner story, Kramer says, "An employer has a right to control the premises." This viewpoint is a valid application of property rights.
The strict observance of property rights is one of the chief guarantors of peaceful coexistence among the various members of a society. When someone exercises the right to control that which he owns, he is the sole determiner of what he or others can -- and, just as importantly, cannot -- do with a given piece of tangible or intangible property. (Of course, this statement implicitly accepts the fact that this right is absolute only as long as the property owner in question does not violate the identical rights of others by coercive force or fraud. How he uses his property must not materially damage someone else's property. If this occurs, restitution is in order.)
On the surface, defending AOL's actions in regard to self-defense issues leaves an unpleasant taste. Apparently, AOL has cut "access to some gun-related Web sites." They do, of course, have the right to control what occurs in their virtual space as well as the physical space of the buildings they own. Even if the political positions they support are wrong-headed and fly in the face of facts, reality, and morality, the owners of AOL are free to make stupid choices. After all, property rights (or any rights) would be of little value if they were enforced only when one acted correctly. (Not to mention the issue of who gets to make the judgment of what is wrong or what is right.)
Perhaps the Founding Fathers missed a good bet by not adding another item to the Bill of Rights: The right of the people to be wrong shall not be infringed.
But of course, they could not reasonably have imagined the bizarre degree to which a perfectly clear and straightforward legal document could be distorted, ignored, and parsed beyond recognition. A large proportion of the laws that currently infest this nation were promulgated in the belief that people should, in fact, not be permitted to engage in activities that might damage themselves physically or mentally. (For an obvious example of each, consider, respectively, the Drug War and censorship.)
The politicians and their allies in the press, academia, and elsewhere believe -- oddly -- that once you are elected to political office or appointed to some bureaucratic position that you somehow become not only a technical expert qualified to pontificate on any and all subjects but a moral expert with not only the authority but the right to force your judgments upon the less-well-mentally-endowed subjects, er, citizens who voted you into office. (What in the world a lawyer -- and the number of lawyers in office is frightening -- knows about obtaining oil supplies, growing corn, or preparing for self-defense escapes me. I'd wager a fair sum that most politicians have never worked an oil well, walked a corn field, or fired a handgun.)
In the Utah case, AOL is arguing that they -- and they alone -- should be able to decide whether or not their employees can have easy access to weapons. AOL would obviously not react favorably to someone else deciding for them what conditions must accompany the use of their property. In firing these three employees, however, for what they did on property AOL merely leases but does not own -- the parking lot -- AOL officials seem to be overstepping the bounds of legitimate rights and entering into the realm of deciding for their employees what is or is not proper behavior.
In a totally free society, AOL might be able to (try to) insist as a requirement of employment that its workers pledge to be "gun-free" even in the privacy of their own homes. I suspect if AOL did so, they would face a rather severe shortage of job-seekers. In a free society, education and persuasion or boycotts and ostracism would be the proper avenues for changing such short-sighted and ill-advised corporate policy. Given present realities, however, AOL stands on shaky ground. The fired men posed no threat to "workplace safety." They merely transferred weapons from one vehicle to another in preparation for a target shooting expedition. Anti-gun hysteria grants AOL neither the privilege nor the right to interfere with such actions on property they do not own.
Lawyer Mitch Vilos defends his clients by (accurately) stating that, "...in all these setting where people go in and commit mass murders, they're increasing the casualties, not decreasing them, when they take the guns away from the people who would provide the first line of defense.... Any amoeba that could reason logically would know that."
But, of course, as I stated in my article, "The War on Self-Defense," there is no concern for logic, consistency with reality, or adherence to morality in the strident and shrill cries to keep law-abiding citizens disarmed. Power, control, and fear are what ultimately motivate those who diligently attempt to impose their will upon the rest of us. Indeed, in today's wacky political realm, we are "treated" to the spectacle of a statist and control-freak like Senator Ted Kennedy castigating -- and demanding an apology from -- attorney-general designate John Ashcroft for daring to state the truth: that a prime reason for owning guns and enshrining that right in our Constitution via the Bill of Rights is to provide a check on the potential tyranny of any government, ours included.
Regardless of what laws the Utah legislature have enacted or what the courts there might decide, however, it is a violation of property rights for politicians to say, for example, that only churches and homeowners may ban guns on their property. (It is, of course, also a violation of rights to require carry licenses, in the first place.) Laws that treat businesses as "public" spaces -- as though such property existed in some netherworld between state-owned and non-business-owned property -- have no moral validity. A business-owner -- whether an individual, a group of people, or a corporation -- still has property rights. Simply because you permit others to enter your property does not void your control.
(Our increasingly fascist society, however, serves only to obliterate this crucial fact. [Fascism here is defined as a private entity holding title to a piece of property while the State dictates how that property shall be used.] Unfortunately, our welfare state reinforces this notion by sanctioning taxes, regulations, prior restraint, and other forms of redistribution of and restrictions on what you own.)
As Ayn Rand said,"The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible." ("Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 94.)
Here, then, we witness the ultimate aim of the gun-banners, the regulators, and the cultural monitors. By shrinking and finally destroying any proper understanding of -- let alone sympathy for or implementation of -- property rights, the new fascists will curtail your right to your life. Every time these statists violate your right to free expression, violate your right to be free of arbitrary searches and seizures, violate your right to carry or even own a weapon, or violate any other right recognized explicitly or implicitly by the Constitution, they weaken respect for and observance of your property and your life. Chaos and conflict are the inevitable consequences of such evil actions.
If you want to live peacefully with your neighbors; if you want a civilized world grounded in justice; if you want a safe society in which individuals, their families, and their careers can flourish and prosper, then you must adhere rigidly, confidently, and consistently to the right of all persons to earn, keep, and use their property -- including their guns -- as they see fit...even if you disagree.
As Rand observed, "There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave'." (Ibid, p. 96, emphasis in original.) With guns in the hands of a well-informed citizenry, we can ensure that -- in the United States, at least -- this is one "right" that will never again see the light of day.
