Greenfield Council blinks - open carry fine proposal set aside after gun owners speak against it

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Great work for those of you who made the meeting and spoke - that's how public policy is made - by those who bother to consistently show up and make it!!

When localities come up with these schemes, we need to pack the room with gun owners at every hearing - and then meet up afterwards at a noice restaurant (sans alcohol service).

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http://www.greenfieldnow.com/news/48185272.html

City holsters gun rule for now
Open carry issue is still legally uncertain



Posted: Jun. 16, 2009 4:04 p.m.

Greenfield — City officials are playing the wait-and-see game on a proposed ordinance that would allow police to issue citations for people who openly carry guns into businesses where it is expressly prohibited.

State law prohibits people from openly carrying guns in schools, public buildings and places where alcohol is served. Alderwoman Linda Lubotsky proposed the more restrictive ordinance after state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in April declared that open carry is legal in Wisconsin in other instances.

Balancing the legal scales
Van Hollen's statement came on the heels of a West Allis municipal court case in which West Allis resident Brad Krause was found not guilty of disorderly conduct after he was arrested for openly displaying a gun while doing yard work.

City Attorney Roger Pyzyk is looking into whether Lubotsky's proposal could work under state law, Lubotsky said. City officials also are waiting to see how a similar measure pans out in South Milwaukee.

Open carry advocates argue such an ordinance violates their constitutional rights and would be illegal in Wisconsin.

Several of those proponents, including Krause, voiced their opinions at a Greenfield Legislative Committee meeting Monday, Lubotsky said.

Business rights
Lubotsky proposed the law to give business owners more protection on who patronizes their stores.

"I don't want to take away the constitutional rights of businesses," she said.

The city's Legislative Committee will continue discussing the issue next month.

 

- Mark Schaaf, Staff Writer

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Glad to hear it, Great Job

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Well thats winning the battle, now on to the war!

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"I don't want to take away the constitutional rights of businesses," she said.

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Since when do businesses have constitutional rights?

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Why do they need a law for that? Is that so they can put tiny signs that nobody can see and then arrest people for them?

Because around here no such laws exist yet businesses are not hampered in their ability to restrict such activity on their premises. They can ask you to leave and if you don't they can cite you for trespassing.

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zoom6zoom wrote:

"I don't want to take away the constitutional rights of businesses," she said.

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Since when do businesses have constitutional rights?

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Ahh.. someone's paying attention! Us ignorant masses aren't supposed to be doing that!

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No one has "constitutional rights."
What we DO have are God-given, constitutionally PROTECTED rights.
And yes, businesses are entitled to them as well.

Just don't spend your money there, end of story.

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I have to disagree with you Mark. Businesses per se, do not have constitutional rights. Their owner or owners (being people) do. And since the place of business is property, the owners may exercise their rights related to their business property. I think that may have been what you were getting at.

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duplicate post.

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Actually, there is a fair sized contingent who believe the decline of modern society began when they started granting a legal "entity status" to business, apart from the owner(s) of that business. A business "entity" has no conscience, no remorse, no empathy. It's a wall of inhumanity that provides shelter for cruel humans to hide behind.

OT perhaps... I'm just saying...

TFred

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Lots of "businesses" are sole proprietorships, not corporations.
For all practical purposes, it is a person doing business as such-and-such.

They have constitutionally defined and protected rights.

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I think the issue is that the business owner would no longer have the right to decline. In other words if this ordnance is passed the store owner puts the sign up and if you walk in to a shop carrying you get fined whether the shop owner complains or not. At least thats how I see it. The way it is now is if you walk in they ask you to leave, if you refuse you are now in violation of that shop owners rights and subject to arrest. That is in any circumstance, not strictly limited to gun owners. If you walk into a store with a t-shirt on that has offensive writing on it and the shop owner asks you to leave and you dont then your trespassing. To single out the gun owner is where the question of legality comes in.

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Armed4Life wrote:

I have to disagree with you Mark. Businesses per se, do not have constitutional rights.

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It is black letter law that business and other associative entities including corporations ("legal persons") do have constitutonal rights, e.g., freedom of speech, due process, etc. Whether or not state created corporations have limited liability though is a matter of state law - so if you would like to be personally sued everytime one of the companies in your portfolio is sued, then go ahead and start a campaign to make that happen.

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Mike wrote:

Armed4Life wrote:

I have to disagree with you Mark. Businesses per se, do not have constitutional rights.

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It is black letter law that business and other associative entities including corporations ("legal persons") do have constitutonal rights, e.g., freedom of speech, due process, etc.  Whether or not state created corporations have limited liability though is a matter of state law - so if you would like to be personally sued everytime one of the companies in your portfolio is sued, then go ahead and start a campaign to make that happen.

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That may be the state of law but when I read the bill of rights, the words business, corporation, or associative entity are noticably absent.

Such entities certainly existed (to a certain degree) at the time of the writing of the bill of rights so if that was the intent, they would have included them.

Those guys were pretty smart fellows

I think TFred hit the nail on the head, as soon as you grant person status to non-person entities, we're all doomed.

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bigdaddy1 wrote:

I think the issue is that the business owner would no longer have the right to decline. In other words if this ordnance is passed the store owner puts the sign up and if you walk in to a shop carrying you get fined whether the shop owner complains or not. At least thats how I see it. The way it is now is if you walk in they ask you to leave, if you refuse you are now in violation of that shop owners rights and subject to arrest. That is in any circumstance, not strictly limited to gun owners. If you walk into a store with a t-shirt on that has offensive writing on it and the shop owner asks you to leave and you dont then your trespassing. To single out the gun owner is where the question of legality comes in

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its just trespassing by a non-protected minority fined requiring due process and court officer

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zoom6zoom wrote:

"I don't want to take away the constitutional rights of businesses," she said.

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Since when do businesses have constitutional rights?

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Agreed - utterly absurd, and highly discriminatory! What's next? Businesses banning beehive hairdos?

What? What?

Seriously, this is beginning to border on discrimination, harkening back to the days when men were refused service because they had a ponytail.

People can be refused service for many things, but nearly all are related to either health (shoes in a restuarant), or decorum required as part of the embeance of the establishment (shirts).

For the issue of OC, I think it would be relatively easy to sue a business who refused service while claiming the OC was creating any sort of disturbance for the other clientelle. It would be incumbant upon the business to prove that such a disturbance was being created by the OC, rather than any clientelle's (or managers') inappropriate response to the free exercise of one's Constitutional right.

Merely displaying the "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" does not give them the right to to discriminate against calm, rational, law-abiding citizens going about their lawful business, even if that business is in their store. Many lawsuits have been won, although mainly on grounds of emotional distress, against businesses who refused service to someone simply because they looked different (tattoos, piercings, weird hair, etc.). It could easily be argued that lawful open carry may look different, but is no different with respect to conducting normal business than any other look.

The patrons, managers, and store owners may just have to get over it.