House panel votes to allow guns in business parking lots

PHOENIX -- Faced with a choice between gun rights and property rights, a House panel sided Thursday with the former.
 
On a 6-2 vote the Judiciary Committee approved legislation to allow people to drive into privately owned parking lots with loaded weapons in their vehicles. The wishes of the business owner would become legally irrelevant.
 
With bipartisan support, the bill now goes to the full House.
 
The measure is being pushed by the National Rifle Association, which has convinced lawmakers in some other states to approve similar measures. Lobbyist Todd Rathner said people have a constitutional right to be armed.
 
"If they carry a gun for self-defense, they're not able to exercise that right if they carry a gun from their home to their place of work,'' he said, as most companies and property owners do not provide lockers or other places for the gun owners to store their weapons while they are inside the office, manufacturing plant or store.
 
Rather said more than the right to be armed is at stake.
 
"People should have the right to privacy in their own vehicle,'' he said. "If they want to keep their firearm there, they should be able to do that.''
 
But Marc Osborn, who lobbies for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said HB 2474 ignores the rights of employers to keep their properties free of weapons.
 
Osborn acknowledged that nothing in the bill would require companies to let workers actually bring a gun into the building. It even requires that a weapon "remain out of plain view.''
 
He said, though, having weapons even in a parking lot, easily accessible to workers, can prove dangerous -- particularly with the economy the way it is and companies having to lay off workers.
 
"These could be employees who have clean employment histories, model employees,'' Osborn said.
 
"But we're in an economic crisis,'' he continued. "And sometimes they may snap.''
 
Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who is carrying the bill, said he inserted provisions designed to protect companies from being sued if one employee harms another with a gun brought onto the property. Osborn said that protection is legally worthless, citing a constitutional provision which precludes lawmakers from limiting the rights of individuals to sue.
 
Liability questions aside, Kavanagh said it's a matter of whose rights are more important. In this case, he said, an employer's property rights fall when balanced against the right of an individual to have a gun in his or her own locked vehicle, even if on company property. He said allowing the company to dictate such a restriction is the equivalent of a business owner telling workers they cannot drive onto the property with a particular newspaper in the car because the owner doesn't like what that paper has written.
 
That comparison did not wash with Rep. Bill Konopnicki, R-Safford. "Those aren't even close to the same kind of issue,'' he said.
 
Kavanagh backed off, replacing that comparison with the point that a company's private property rights does not allow it to refuse to hire blacks.
 
He also rejected Osborn's contention that the risk of an employee going berserk was sufficient reason to bar all workers from carrying weapons onto a company's property. "We don't make laws based on the one-in-a-billion unusual act of some lunatic grabbing a gun,'' Kavanagh said.
 
Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, added a personal touch to the debate, saying one of his workers at the recreational vehicle park he owned was killed by a former employee.
 
"I remember wishing ... that I had had a gun in my vehicle and many other of my employees had had a gun in their vehicle,'' Ash said, noting that the former worker had disappeared and there was a fear he was still in the park. "I think this actually makes employment sites safer.''
 
But Konopnicki, who owns several fast-food restaurants, cited his own experience where an employee was killed by someone else who brought a gun, not only onto the property but, against company policy, actually onto the premises. He said employers should be able to set rules.
 
And Konopnicki said there's an answer for those who feel they need a gun in their car. "Don't work for that employer,'' he said.
 
But Konopnicki, after noting the bill was going to pass anyway, changed his vote and decided to support the measure.