Forcing employers to allow guns at work? This is an idea only the gun lobby could like. Yet it is one they are trying to push into every state and workplace in America at the expense of your safety.

For several years, the NRA had been losing this fight, thanks to solid opposition from the business community, the Brady Center, the American Bar Association, and the vast majority of affected workers.

But earlier this month, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist – a potential running mate for John McCain – ignored that opposition, and concerns for private property rights, and signed his state’s guns-at-work bill into law.

If this law takes effect, it will certainly increase the risk of workplace violence for millions of Floridians who go to work every day. Far too often, disgruntled and dangerous employees in a moment of rage have retrieved guns from their cars to shoot coworkers and supervisors.

Consider too, that:

• A May 2005 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that workplaces where guns were permitted were 5 to 7 times more likely to be the site of a workplace homicide compared to workplaces where guns were prohibited.

• According to the most recent CDC data, murder is the leading cause of injury-related death for women in the workplace, while about three-quarters of work-related homicides are committed with firearms; and

• 60% of major employers said in a 2005 survey that disgruntled employees had threatened to assault or kill senior managers in the last year.

We should be making these workplace gun crimes harder to commit, not easier.

What can be done? The next step in Florida will be a lawsuit arguing that this dangerous law is unconstitutional. A federal judge in Oklahoma last year struck down a similar law in that state because it ran afoul of the federal duty shared by every employer in America to provide a safe workplace. Companies can hardly meet this obligation if they no longer have control over guns on their property.

The Brady Center, joined by two major safety and security professional organizations, recently filed a brief seeking affirmance of that decision, and we will certainly support the legal battle in Florida as well.

The 7.8 million Floridians who go to work every day, and who have the power to replace legislators that put the interests of the gun lobby ahead of their safety at work, need to make their voices heard.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

What do you call a law that forces employers to accept guns on their property, when doing so makes it impossible to provide a safe workplace under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)?

Ridiculous?

What do you call a law that could force guns onto the private property of a homeowner who doesn’t want them?

Outrageous?

In Oklahoma, they call it “unenforceable.�

Last Thursday, October 4, Judge Terence Kern of the Federal District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, issued a 93-page injunction [pdf document] that rejected the gun lobby’s fiercest effort yet to force guns into America’s workplaces. Notably, the court’s opinion cited the Brady Center report on this critical subject – Forced Entry: The National Rifle Association’s Campaign To Force Businesses To Accept Guns At Work – no fewer than five times.

Under the “forced entry� statutes that Judge Kern rejected (Okla. Stat. §§21-1289.7 and 1290.22(B)), someone who kept a gun in their car would have the right to take their weapon almost anywhere there was a parking lot – courthouses, mental health facilities, day care centers, and almost every private business. Even some homeowners in Oklahoma may not have been able to prevent a guest from driving onto their property with a firearm in his or her automobile. (See pp. 61-62 of the opinion [pdf document].)

Does that make sense to you? Should a guest be able to tell you what you can do on the property that you bought and paid for? Somehow it does to the NRA. Yet to most Americans [see table 8.2] with a more traditional understanding of private property, the Oklahoma law was completely irrational. That helps explain why the NRA’s attempts to pass similar laws have failed in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and nine other states over the last two years.

As it happens, however, Judge Kern didn’t reject the Oklahoma “forced entry� law because it contradicted a basic understanding of private property. Instead, Judge Kern found it impossible for an Oklahoma employer to simultaneously follow the state’s bizarre “forced entry� gun law and fulfill its general duty under OSHA “to protect [ ] employees from recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or serious bodily injury.� The court rightly concluded that an employer’s general duty “extends to the hazard of gun-related workplace violence� and that such violence “is a ‘hazard’ that is likely to cause death or serious bodily injury to employees.�

The evidence is clearly on the court’s side. And it’s just common sense.

Due to the court’s decision, working families in Oklahoma can rest easier knowing that now business owners have control over their property again, and that they can punch their time-clocks without worrying about how many of their co-workers have a semi-automatic firearm out in the parking lot because the law said it was OK.

It’s not OK, and now they have the right to say so.

With the passage in Connecticut of a bill to require lost and stolen guns reported to police, more people are talking about ways that law-abiding gun owners can prevent their firearms from falling into the hands of criminals.

Coincidentally, the fight over an employee’s “right” to take guns onto company property is once again being ignited in Florida. These two stories come together in an Orlando Sentinel article detailing one of the risks of leaving firearms in unattended vehicles.

Gun thefts from motor vehicles are not tracked statewide, but 251 were stolen last year in Orlando and unincorporated Orange County, according to police reports. In 2001, Orlando police, the Sheriff’s Office and the 10 other law-enforcement agencies in Orange combined reported only 193 guns taken in car burglaries and car thefts.

The article also cites instances of vehicles being targeted by criminals who knew where to look for guns. It mentions that many guns stolen — from homes and from cars — go unreported, making it difficult for police to properly and quickly investigate crimes committed with those stolen guns.

In all the talk about the “rights” of gun owners, very little is said about the responsibilities of gun ownership. Safe storage, whether it’s to prevent a tragic accident at home, or to make it harder for a criminal to obtain a firearm by theft, is crucial and uncontroversial.

There is nothing safe about leaving a gun in an unattended (and often unlocked) vehicle.

It’s easy to mobilize people for political purposes if you scare them into thinking that their rights are about to be taken away. Inventing urgency and injustice can create a mob on the streets or on the blogs. Time and again, we’ve seen such mobs try to impose their will on the majority of citizens. In politics, the vocal minority often helps make the rules.

Some elected officials see through this hysteria. In Georgia, an NRA-backed bill to allow guns in company parking lots is drawing a lot of unquestioning support from its membership. But now, a conservative Republican State Senator is being turned off by the shrill demands of the gun pushers and their allies. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed the following e-mail, dated March 24, 2007, from State Senator John Douglas (R-Social Circle) in Georgia, an individual they describe as “one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate� who “usually supports NRA-backed legislation.�

While you are contacting others, contact the NRA and tell them their bullying, threatening tactics are backfiring. I have for the past two years earned an A+ and A rating from them and supported their efforts all the way. They are accusing every major company in Georgia of being anti gun, sending out their alerts every few hours naming more companies as anti gun and acting like a hysterical teenaged girl.

They are falling on their swords over this bill and so am I. There is no way I would vote yes with the way they are conducting themselves.

I am sorry we have come to this point and I look forward to supporting logical, rational gun legislation in the future, but not SB 43. I appreciate your efforts, but the NRA is making their supporters look foolish on this one.

Even the Vice President of the Georgia Sports Shooting Association (GSSA), the official NRA state affiliate for Georgia, has objected to the NRA efforts in support of this legislation. In a March 20, 2007 letter to his fellow Board members of GSSA, Bob Thornton had this to say:

If your boss doesn’t allow guns on his property, LOOK FOR ANOTHER JOB!!!

… GSSA was NOT consulted prior to the introduction of SB-43. That this bill has NOT come UP from the “grass roots�. But, instead has been pushed down from NRA HQ in Washington, D.C. I wish that you would advise them that not all of GSSA Directors support this bill and in fact, if the NRA had brought the bill to the GSSA before the session, there would have been spirited OPPOSITION on the GSSA Board of Directors to this ill-conceived idea.

Too often, people on all sides of any political issue can be reduced to yelling at each other. And too often, this approach is instigated by those in distant national headquarters. If we were better at civil discourse, we might be better at crafting common-sense solutions.

The self-important posturing of the NRA leadership not only misunderstands American tradition and our system of laws, but also represents an enormous threat to many of the rights we Americans take for granted. The gun lobby has long tried to put itself above the law when it comes to the common-sense regulations and rules of legal liability applicable to all other businesses. Now they’re pushing “guns in the workplace� laws in a number of states that try to place their single-minded view of gun rights above everyone’s property rights.

From the Tampa Tribune:

Monday, the Florida Chamber of Commerce announced a tongue-in-cheek “Bring Your Gun to Work Day” and filled a car with weapons and other controversial, but legal, material.

“This bill is not about guns. This bill is a frontal assault on property rights,” says chamber Executive Vice President Mark Wilson, who sees it as a challenge to employers’ fundamental right to set rules governing their private property.

The constitutional rights of free speech and to bear arms take precedent, contends Marion Hammer, a lobbyist who represents the NRA.

No matter how they dress it up, the message the gun pushers send is the same: Our guns are always more important than any of your other rights.