How the NRA Is Bringing Guns on Your Employer’s Property: The Parking Lot Gun Bill

(File Photo-- Not Current)

Are gun rights so paramount that a law can prohibit an employer from banning weapons on its property?

Yes, according to GOP lawmakers and gun rights groups. 

They are promoting a sneaky law titled the Business Liability Protection Act. 

Yawn. 

A better title, according to the National Law Review, is “the Parking Lot Gun Bill.” This law went into effect in June 2018 in West Virginia—and it’s proposed in other red states.

The law says that employers may not prohibit any employee from possessing a legally-owned firearm under the following conditions: (1) the firearm is lawfully possessed; (2) the firearm is out of view; (3) the firearm is locked inside or locked to a motor vehicle in a parking lot; and (4) the employee is lawfully allowed in the parking lot or parking area.

Sure, it has a veneer of a reasonableness.

But whatever happened to a person’s right to control his or her private property?

And if employers are restricted from banning guns on their property, what’s next? (The NRA always has a next step.) Guns in school parking lots? Or, back to private property, prohibiting employers from banning guns in a workplace building?

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Blue states are fighting back. The NRA instituted an insurance program called Carry Guard. This offers gun owners liability protection if their weapon causes unlawful harm and results in a lawsuit.

But there’s a rub: States have exclusive authority to regulate insurance companies. 

New York suspended Carry Guard on grounds that it created liability protection for illegal conduct—for example, a mass shooting.

New York also fined Carry Guard—an arm of the NRA— $7 million.

Washington state has taken similar action against Carry Guard.

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I hope a West Virginia employer will sue to challenge the Parking Lot Gun law. The lawsuit would be straightforward. Under the 14^th Amendment, all persons (and corporations are persons) have a right to life, liberty, and property, and the state cannot deprive anyone (including employers) of these rights without due process. Forcing a person to accept guns anywhere on his or property is clear-cut taking of one’s property rights without due process of law. In short, the law should be ruled unconstitutional.