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The NRA at work

Under the Peaden-Baxley bill, Florida businesses could face criminal charges for prohibiting employees from bringing guns to work in their cars.

Sen. Durell Peaden Jr., R-Crestview, a physician before becoming a politician, knows how to read medical journals. But he neglected his homework before putting his name on the gun lobby's latest Tallahassee outrage.

A North Carolina study reported in the May edition of the American Journal of Public Health found at least five times the risk of homicide at business premises where firearms were allowed as where they were banned.

All the same, the National Rifle Association is calling on its allies in legislatures all over the country to make criminals of employers who forbid workers to keep guns in their cars on company premises. The Florida version is SB 206 by Peaden and HB 129 by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala.

This is the same duo responsible for the internationally notorious new law encouraging Floridians to shoot if they think they're being threatened. Sad to say, that did not mark the limit of the NRA's recklessness. But it won't be so easy for other legislators and the governor to jump on board this time. The new Peaden-Baxley bill is an insult to private enterprise as well as public safety. Promising a strong fight against it, Jon Shebel, the chief executive of Associated Industries of Florida, says, "Common sense and experience tell us that weapons do not belong in the work environment."

Although the NRA implies that the North Carolina study did not allow for the heightened risks inherent to some businesses, the authors say they did. Moreover, a 10-year nationwide survey counted 164 workplace shootings, mostly by disgruntled employees or customers, in which robbery was not a motive. Yet as Peaden, Baxley and the NRA would have it, employers who prohibit lawfully owned guns in parked cars would be subject to felony prosecution as well as civil lawsuits.

The scope may be broader than the sponsors assert. The plain language applies to any "person, property owner, tenant, employer or business entity." Does that apply to school parking lots, too?

The NRA bill tries to mollify Florida business lobbies by granting them immunity from lawsuits for death or injury caused by the protected weapons. The moral implications of that will be as offensive to responsible business people as to the public at large.

Everyone, not just the NRA, will be watching to see how legislators act this time, particularly those who are running for governor (Rod Smith), attorney general (Walter "Skip" Campbell, Burt Saunders, Joe Negron and Everett Rice) and chief financial officer (Randy Johnson and Tom Lee.) They can represent the NRA or the public interest. They can't do both.

[Last modified October 7, 2005, 01:49:15]