Month: April 2008

Eugene Volokh talks about a challenge to the Employment at Will doctrine that revolves around an employee being fired for carrying a licensed concealed firearm at work.  Interesting debate in the commentary.  I particularly like his brother Sasha’s comment here:

The right to self-defense is a sacred right.

Therefore, like all sacred rights, it should be waivable. Because a right that’s non-waivable barely deserves to be called a right at all — it’s more like a duty. You are required to retain your right to self-defense, whether you want to or not! The right to life should imply the right to suicide; the right to liberty should imply the right to contract away your liberty; the right to property should imply the right to alienate your property.

So the right to carry a gun should imply the right to agree not to carry a gun. You could agree to that by making a contract with a specific anti-gun clause; you could agree to that by making a contract incorporating a policy handbook with a prohibition on guns; or you could agree to that by making a contract of the form “you can fire me whenever you want for whatever reason you like,” which is the basic rule of at-will employment.

This is particularly notable given the NRA’s strategy of altering the Employment at Will doctrine in several states to make it illegal to fire employees who keep a firearm in their car while at work, which I have long disagreed with.  I may believe that an employer is being silly for believing that banning firearms on company property will do anything to stop a determined workplace shooter, but employers and employees should have a right to agree or disagree with such things.

Put a hypocritical anti-gun politician in a prominent position in the legislature, and they can cause all kinds of problems.  We’re fortunate in Pennsylvania that our house speaker is pro-gun, voted against the “Lost and Stolen” bill, which is something to be appreciated when his district is Philadelphia.  But our speaker is a brokered deal between Republicans and Democrats.  If the Dems make more significant inroads in the PA General Assembly, we could soon be in the same position as Tennessee.

Both Ahab and Jeff Soyer have coverage of this.  Rather interesting that this comes out in such a prestigious medical journal just in time for Heller eh?  You’d almost think the NEJM had made a conscious decision to shill for the anti-gun forces.  You’ll notice some familiar names, such as Garen Wintemute, who conducted a bogus study of gun shows a few months back.

The real difficulty in our issue is the people who oppose us are almost universally well connected political elites, and opinion leaders for the people within our country who influence the political process.  We are very much a movement of ordinary-type people who work for a living, and many of whom wouldn’t bother with these types of matters if our betters weren’t so intent on dictating to us a better way to live.  We’ve been very effective, but it’s tough to fight against.  One disavantage to using the federal courts as a means to secure second amendment rights is we’ll be fighting on ground that’s very much dominated by the exact type of elite who is typically against us.  This is going to be hard, we’ll have to fight hard, but fight we must, because we’ll see more and more of this as the anti-gun groups attempt to limit the damage that is likely to be done by Heller.

UPDATE: More from Thirdpower and SayUncle.

Looks like they are debating another pro-gun bill aimed at relaxing the restrictions on concealed carry there, which in the past have been onerous enough to make carrying next to impossible without risking legal trouble.