Parking Lot Guns Bill Could Reappear
Early In '08 Session
(Update at 11:21 a.m. adds link to court decision
at bottom of page.New material highlighted.)
By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia
(10/9/07) To no one’s surprise, the battle over workplace
guns – won by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce last session
when it outgunned the National Rifle Association – will be
rejoined in 2008. But in a session that promises to be packed with
a lot of big issues, it may be rejoined sooner than you might expect.
Word circulating around the Capitol is that the issue could reach
a head in the Senate within the session’s first seven days.
So with the Senate’s ruling Republicans preparing for an
off-campus caucus this week, the Chamber is again putting out word
where it stands.
In an e-mail Monday to members of the caucus, the Chamber’s
Joe Fleming warned that the proposed legislation violates fundamental
principles of their own party by encompassing “more regulation
by big government and the taking of private property rights.”
The NRA, he said, would place Senate Republicans in “a trap”
by asking them to “choose between the principles for which
the members stand and – as one Senator has said – a
solution in search of a problem.”
The bill – HB 89, but containing the key elements of SB 43
– would prohibit employers from banning guns parked in cars
at the workplace. The NRA lobbied the measure heavily last year,
warning senators it would be the only issue on which it based election-year
scorecards. The Chamber and its allies kept the measure from reaching
a final vote, but the measure remains alive for the ’08 session.
Chamber officials met last week and “strongly re-affirmed
their complete, total opposition” to the bill as it affects
property owners’ rights, Fleming wrote.
Here are some more excerpts from the e-mail:
We
respectfully ask that you to oppose any legislation that strips
landowners and business owners of the right to determine policies
they believe are best for their property and employees and business
and workplace.
In
a time of a war against terror, when many employers are the possible
targets of terrorist and horrible acts, it seems unwise at best,
certainly unnecessary to handcuff companies that believe that are
taking the right steps to provide themselves, their associates,
their customers and guests, and their assets.
With
SB 43 now included as part of the bill, this measure could also
mean significant new costs to property-casualty, liability and workers’
compensation insurance policies and diminishes the rights of employers
to set the terms of employment and attacks Georgia's long-standing
"employment-at-will" doctrine.
For
the NRA, this is their "only priority" this year. But
many, many NRA members disagree with their Washington office's priorities.
As
one NRA-certified instructor and business owner said: "I allow
employees to keep guns in their cars, and on their person at work.
But I oppose this legislation. This decision is a decision best
left for each company to make itself, not the government. Such decisions
are the responsibility and reward and the very definition of ownership."
Here
is a link to our story from April 17, when the Senate ended the
debate for the ’07 session.
Meanwhile, Chamber strategists were buoyed by news out of Oklahoma
this weekend that a federal judge had overturned an Oklahoma law
intended to have the same effect as the proposed Georgia measure.
U.S. District Judge Terence Kern held that amendments to the Oklahoma
Firearms Act and the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act were in conflict
with a federal law meant to protect employees on the job.
The NRA's effort to pass workplace gun laws stems from a decision
by Weyerhauser Corp.to fire eight employees in 2002 when guns were
found in their cars on company lots in Oklahoma.
Kern, quoted by The Associated Press, said the amendments "criminally
prohibit an effective method of reducing gun-related workplace injuries
and cannot co-exist with federal obligations and objectives."
Click here
for the decision. (330 kb in Adobe Acrobat format)
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