Prohibition of Concealed Carry in Restaurant/Bar - Exceptions

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I know I really need to ask these questions of my lawyer. I just wanted to throw this out there and see where it goes.

Snipped from 18.2-308(J3):
[See http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+18.2-308 for full text]

nothing herein shall prohibit [...] any owner or event sponsor or his employees from carrying a concealed handgun while on duty at such restaurant or club if such person has a concealed handgun permit.

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I can not find "employee" or "event sponsor" defined anywhere in the code of Virginia, but I'm sure those terms have been defined by the courts at some point. Can anyone provide legal definitions of those terms?

Scenario 1) A company dinner party in a private room at a restaurant. Is an employee of that company, who has a CHP, and is giving a presentation or a speech or in some way is an organizer of the dinner party, prohibited from carrying a concealed handgun?

Scenario 2) A musician performing in a restaurant. Is said musician, who has a CHP, an event sponsor or an employee of the restaurant to the extent that would allow the carrying of a concealed handgun? What if the musician is not being paid by the restaurant, but is permitted and encouraged by the owner to perform on the premises for tips?

Scenario 3) A contractor hired by a restaurant to work on their computers. Is a contractor, who has a CHP, and is only there on a short-term assignment of less than one day, considered an employee to the extent that would allow the carrying of a concealed handgun? For that matter, is a long-term contractor considered an employee?

Scenario 4) Does anyone have any more?

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Not sure about your scenarios but a student asked a good question in a class last week about this...

They asked if the employee had to notify the owner. I didnt see anything in the Code, so I assume not.....

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ProShooter wrote:

Not sure about your scenarios but a student asked a good question in a class last week about this...

They asked if the employee had to notify the owner. I didnt see anything in the Code, so I assume not.....

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I concur, there isn't a notification clause at this time. The restaurant owner could still have a policy against firearms in the workplace, though. This law wouldn't protect the employee in that case.

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I disagree that the law wouldn't protect the employee if the owner had a policy against guns.

As a parallel example, I'm a student at Virginia Tech where student's aren't allowed to have guns on campus per their student code of conduct. The law says I'm ok so long as I have my permit, but Tech could (and likely would) kick me out.

The law and the rules are two different things with two different sanctions. The employer could fire the employee for violating their policies, but couldn't do anything legally (in my non-lawerly opinion) anymore than he could prosecute for looking at this website on a work related computer.

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SaltH2OHokie wrote:

I disagree that the law wouldn't protect the employee if the owner had a policy against guns.

As a parallel example, I'm a student at Virginia Tech where student's aren't allowed to have guns on campus per their student code of conduct. The law says I'm ok so long as I have my permit, but Tech could (and likely would) kick me out.

The law and the rules are two different things with two different sanctions. The employer could fire the employee for violating their policies, but couldn't do anything legally (in my non-lawerly opinion) anymore than he could prosecute for looking at this website on a work related computer.

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That's what I meant. The law, 18.2-308(J3), won't protect the employee from the employer's policy.

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As a musician in a band and a sound engineer, I keep that part of the code in the back of my mind as justification to conceal-carry when I run sound. I am being paid for a service and in the course of performing that service I am going to carry.

It has never been an issue, since I'm carrying concealed and, well, if nobody sees it then they can't argue the cite anyway.

I have often wondered about the strength of the argument, but have never given thought to testing the waters. I carry and don't ask about it.

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The question that the code is addressing is, "who's in charge here?"; ordinarly, the manager of the business (regardless of whether he's the owner of the business, and what the business' property rights are) is in charge, and the employees are there to carry out the will of the manager (and not their own - the word "employee" means, "one who is used", after all, and is a synonym with "servant"). The "sponsor of an event" is similarly the person who's in charge of the event, while the event is going on; the manager of the business will be presumed to have transferred some measure of control for that purpose.

A contractor is not an employee. Playing music in a restaurant is not an "event", nor is fixing a computer, and people hired for specific tasks as contractors are not covered by the exception.

If the business manager in such a restaurant expressed the feeling that guns should remain outside, and an employee brings a concealed handgun in anyway, that employee will have committed a crime, because he's not an employee for that purpose. If he acts outside the scope of his employment, he loses the protection provided by the statute.

If someone organizes a special meeting using such a restaurant in an area not intended for general public access while the meeting is going on, that's an "event".

Whoever is really in charge can determine the policy about concealed weapons. That's not generally the musician or the computer fixing guy.