http://www.nrapublications.org/first%20freedom/Conoco.asp

That’s an account of the incident. It looks like people who refused the search were summarily fired, and a few volunteered that they had pistols in their vehicles. Weyerhauser does not deserve to have anyone work for them, and I certainly never would if that’s how they treat their employees. No one should ever give an employer permission to search your vehicle. But the government should still stay out of it.

Weyerhauser, I believe it was did such by getting the aid of the sheriff’s department to do the search with drug dogs. Their stated rationale was a search for drugs. Of course, as you know drug dogs are trained to alert on drugs, guns, and car bumpers. So, in effect every car was searched illegally. No drugs were found, but guns were, most were deer rifles in expectation of the opening of deer season the next day or at any event, very shortly. Those employees were fired, the sheriff was pissed at being used that way, and the employer suffered no damages for his illegal searches. Of course, he had good cover, he had involved law enforcement under false pretenses, who were all too willing to violate the rights of the employees as a part of the unconstitutional permissions they have under the guise of the War on Drugs.

Google it, it took place in Valiant, Ok. Not the only abuse by a damn sight, but one of the more recent.

I am not in favor of government force. However, if they will not protect my rights from violation by another private citiizen, could they at least not prosecute me when I do. You suggest government should be neutral on this. I could live with that, though I don’t think it appropriate. But, the fact is, they are not neutral. Government will take a hand if you assert your rights through force. Employers and others who would violate you know this. Ergo, they do all they can to enslave you, leaving you only force with which to reply or subjugation of your person and surrender of your rights as a free man. They are banking on the non-neutrality of government to aid them in their depredations of the rights of others.

Since government involvement is thus inevitable, it should be exercised in defense of the Constitution and the Constitutional rights of the citizen, and against the citizens or groups of citizens who would strip others of those rights.

I have had policemen tell me to “Shut up.” As it happened, it was a situation where I had been accused of running someone off the road. I had said “Officer, I wasn’t even on that road, and I can prove it.” I was enraged, not because he accused me of the crime, he was doing what he thought he should when he stopped me. I was enraged because he would take from me my right to speak, my right to speak in my defense, and that he was trying to establish higher order of citizenship than I enjoyed.

I told him ” You better be a Hell of lot tougher than you look, or you better be damn quick with that gun, if you speak to me like that again.” And I wasn’t kidding. I also know how deadly something like that can be and I had elected him to lose if I could make it happen. I was unarmed, but he was close. Don’t know how it would have turned out because just at that moment he got a call that they had caught the guy and needed his help right away. He never said a word, just turned got in his car and peeled out. He should have apologized. I’m mad just thinking about it.

The point of the above is this; I won’t tolerate an armed man stripping me of my citizenship by violating my rights, I sure as Hell won’t tolerate it from a sonofabitch that has to hire it done. I admit this is not something I invented, it is not in any way original with me. There was a time when all or almost all American men felt that way. When that was still true, we didn’t have to fight for return of a portion of our rights, nor did we need permission to exercise a right (oxymoronic statement, I know).

That belief system worked and worked well. The successive belief systems have not worked for the preservation of liberty. I choose the earlier philosophies of the better men who were our forebears. If the majority of us did, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?

Like I said, I might think it’s stupid and dumb, but employers hold their employees to a lot of things that are stupid and dumb.

I’m not unsympathetic to this issue, but I think there are carrot and stick ways to accomplish the goal, through manipulating torts and such, that wouldn’t infringe on either the employer’s property rights, or the private relationship between employers and employees.

Now, I’ll tell you why you are wrong. When you are working for the employer, you have sold him that time. It is his. He has paid for it and he can determine how you use it, and how you represent him. He has rented your time and talent. He did not buy you.

The defense of the employer that he has already denied you certain rights is not true, therefore another denial won’t be unique, just isn’t true. He didn’t rent or buy your home, your car, your travel to and from work. If he had, he would bear responsibility for your security as he does in his place of employment, but so often fails to provide.

More to follow

You won’t get any argument from me about that. If I am an employer, I will encourage my employees to carry to work. But an HR weenie can come up with all kinds of excuses, most of them total shit. It’s a persuasive argument that it has no bearing on quality of work and poses no hazard to the company or fellow employees. I don’t need to be persuaded of that because I believe it. But what you’re talking about is the government coming in and forcing your employer to associate with you under terms dictated by the government that your employer doesn’t want to be a party to. I’ve heard stories of employees of auto companies not being able to park their car on the property if it wasn’t American made, which I think is equally silly, but it’s also I think within the employers rights to do so. There’s a lot of decisions that get made in a corporate environment that have no impact at all on people’s work, that we comply with so we can continue working. I’ve quit more than one job because the bullshit just got too thick for me. In theory at least, employment is a voluntary relationship between two parties.

(Of course, there is the argument that a gated, guarded parking lot isn’t “public”, so there may be something to it.)

This law balances the rights of the employee and the employer. The employers’ rights are not being trampled upon. If the employer was being forced to accept guns in their work area (office building or the like) then I would be outraged, but not in the parking lot.

Additionally you wrote “… especially one that comes down to a matter of behavior, and not characteristics that people are born with.”
But the RKBA is something that we are born with. I’ll presume that you just weren’t thinking that through when typing. So far you’re not convincing me that the property rights of employers are trumping yet.

That’s making me think this is less about property rights for me, so much as it is about believing the government shouldn’t regulate private relationships between parties. It’s one thing if a contract is in dispute, and the parties ask the government to resolve it. It’s another thing for the government to force a relationship to continue if one party is no longer willing.