kasteer71 wrote:
Hi all. I've been thinking about my 2A rights vs someone with a sign banning handguns/weapons on private property. I just don't get that my consitutional RIGHT can be removed on someone else's private property with a gan/weapon ban sign. On that same token, how can they ask an OC'er to leave?
I understand the constitution to say I have a right to bear arms. I don't know of anyplace where it says I have the right to take that away from anyone else. What gives?
Wanting to have the legal right/ability to lawfully carry a firearm on private property is very much a 2-edged sword that cuts both ways.
Let’s say you work hard for many years and after saving up and a little help from a business loan you decide to open your own business. It’s yours. You pay the bills, you buy the inventory to sell to the public, hire employees, pay taxes and are a good citizen for hiring local talent and helping the economy. Yours is a gun store where you sell firearms and firearm related material. The same day you open your store is the same day lawmakers/a law proposition passes which says the constitutional rights of an individual cannot be denied on private property by the deed owner/business manager/representative of same/etc.
After being in business for a year and making a nice profit you find out one of your regular customers just snapped one day and shot his wife and kids. ]It was all over the news, made national headlines for the brutality and your store is identified as the shop that sold him the shotgun he took his 3-year girl’s head off with.
Now here I come, all high and mighty against guns and the 2[sup]nd[/sup] amendment. I think guns are the root of all of society’s problems and because I hear yours is the store that sold the guy his shotgun I start to poster your store with anti 2[sup]nd[/sup] amendment propaganda posters, crime scene photos of the decapitated little girl and encourage people with these images to not frequent your store.
Because of that law which passed the same day you opened your business, it’s my first amendment right of free speech to have all that up and because of that law should you remove them or bar me from putting them up you will be guilty of denying my constitutional 1[sup]st[/sup] amendment right of free speech on your private property.
You begin to lose even more business because people don’t want to be associated with your store and the posters and photos I put up compound the issue to the point that your business fails. ]Yes the store and the land it sits on belongs to you; but you don’t have any say on the material which is put up outside.
Now imagine it’s your home and the guy down the street wants to place a NAMBLA support poster on your front lawn. ]Or it’s the lady across the road who wants to put a “Re-elect Obama ‘12” campaign poster on your porch.
As a private property owner (both a home and a business) that frightens me to no end.
