Saturday, March 01, 2008

To take note of a couple of Oklahoma laws

passed or proposed that touch on the 2nd, I note these:
HB2513: The bill would allow students to carry firearms on campus if they are at least 21 and are licensed to carry a concealed weapon. "As long as students kept their weapons concealed, they could go into class with them," Murphey said. He said he decided that the bill was needed after the Feb. 14 shootings that left six dead, including the gunman, at Northern Illinois University and an attack in April at Virginia Tech in which a gunman killed 32 people.

Of course, one of the objections is Rep. Paul Roan, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper for 25 years, voted against the bill, saying such a law could greatly hinder law enforcement.

"You wouldn't know who the players are," he said. Because weapons now are banned, he said, police can tell if someone comes onto campus "with a gun for evil purposes."

No you can't, sir; you have no damned idea if someone has 'evil purposes' in mind or is just concerned with protecting themselves if some dirtbag decides to get his name in the media. And it doesn't do any good for the cops to 'know who the players are' when that means they find a bunch of dead students and teachers and a bad guy. When they finally get there.

Which is the reason for this bill: the cops always get there after pretty much everybody who will die, is dead. It may sound very nice to say "We need to know who the players are", but that is covered very nicely by "Some guy just started shooting at people, and a guy in class shot him. Yeah, we're in the classroom and we'll stay here 'till you get here." on the phone. Or simply the good guy setting his piece on a desk- unloaded if there's time- and saying "My sidearm's over there." Or something similar.

Second, a while back OK passes a law basically saying that employers couldn't fire someone for having a firearm locked in their vehicle. And some people are not happy about it:
ConocoPhillips Co. and other smaller employers in a court case contend the law constitutes "an unconstitutional taking of (their) property" and their right to exclude people from their property. That argument is in a new filing by the employers at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They want the court to uphold a decision of U.S. District Judge Terence Kern in Tulsa who struck down the law.
Now a couple of other groups are getting in on it:
Two major safety and security organizations - the American Society of Safety Engineers and ASIS International - joined the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in filing a "friend of the court" brief urging the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a 2007 federal district court ruling striking down Oklahoma's 2005 guns-at-work law as unconstitutional. In a suit filed by ConocoPhillips and others - ConocoPhillips v. Henry - the lower court held that the law, which made it a crime in Oklahoma for employers to bar guns from company property, impermissibly conflicted with the general duty under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act for all employers to provide workplaces free from recognized hazards.

To me, the 'right to exclude people from their property' argument sounds like BS; they're not 'excluding people', they're telling people they can't have something in their vehicle. And the 'providing a workplace free from recognized hazards' is standard Brady Coalition to Ban Firearms and other nanny groups crap.

One more set of battles.

3 comments:

Mattexian said...

I recall from my days as security at a refinery, they had the attitude that they had the absolute right to snoop in their employees' vehicles There were all sorts of things on the "verboten" list, guns/alcohol/illegal drugs being at the top. It's the damned lawyers and insurance companies telling the companies that they must have these stupid nanny laws.

Anonymous said...

Because the police cannot tell? They treat everybody as suspect in a situation anyway, and take all day to block it all off and check everybody. Makes it easier my eye. It gets people killed. I rather be alive and give that officer a hard time then dead having a bier with the Almighty.

Anonymous said...

If companies have a duty to provide 'a workplace free from recognized hazards', how can my last (asshole) supervisor be explained?