Have Gun, Will Travel . . . to Work;
Case 8.4 Have Gun, Will Travel . . . to Work
ORGANI ZATIONAL THEORI STS AND EMPLOYEE advocates frequently emphasize the importance, from
both a moral and a practical point of view, of companies’ respecting the rights of their employees. Many
employees spend long hours at work and remain tethered to the job by phone or computer even when
they are off- site; not just their careers but also their friendships, social identity, and emotional lives are
tied up with their work. All the more reason, it seems, that companies should recognize and respect
their moral, political, and legal rights. But enshrined in our Constitution is one right that frequently gets
overlooked in discussions of the workplace: the right to bear arms. In 2002 Weyerhaeuser, the Seattle-
based timber- products company, fired several employees at an Oklahoma plant who were discovered to
have violated company policy by keeping guns in their vehicles. Their dismissal provoked a response
from the National Rifle Association ( NRA) and other gun- rights advocates, which since then have been
lobbying for legislation that would make it illegal for companies to bar employees from leaving guns in
their cars in company parking lots. Although no state requires companies to allow workers to carry
weapons into the workplace, four states have passed laws guaranteeing them the right to keep guns in
their cars, and several other states are weighing whether to follow suit. Gun advocates argue that
licensed gun owners should have access to their weapons in case they need them on the trek to and
from work. If an employer can ban guns from workers’ cars, “ it would be a wrecking ball to the Second
Amendment” of the U. S. Constitution, says Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. Brian
Siebel, a senior attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, thinks otherwise. He sees these
laws as “ a systematic attempt to force guns into every nook and cranny in society and prohibit
anyone, whether it’s private employers or college campuses . . . from barring guns from their premises.”
But that’s not how UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh looks at it. “ It’s part of the general movement,”
he says, “ to allow people to have guns for self- defense not only at home, but in public places where
they’re most likely needed.” For his part, LaPierre of the NRA contends that the legal right of people to
have guns for personal protection is largely nullified if employers can ban guns from the parking lot. “
Saying you can protect yourself with a firearm when you get off work late at night,” he argues, “ is
meaningless if you can’t keep it in the trunk of your car when you’re at work.” Interpreting the
somewhat ambiguous language of the Second Amendment is not easy. It only says, “ A well- regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.” All jurists agree, however, that the Second Amendment does not make all forms
of gun control unconstitutional and that, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, it places restrictions only on
what government, not private parties, may do. In particular, the Second Amendment does not give gun
owners a constitutionally protected right to carry their weapons onto somebody else’s private
property against the wishes of the owner. “ If I said to somebody, ‘ You can’t bring your gun into my
house,’ that person’s rights would not be violated,” explains Mark Tushnet, a Harvard law professor. For
this reason, the American Bar Association sides with business owners and endorses “ the traditional
property rights of private employers and other private property owners to exclude” people with
firearms. Steve Halverson, president of a Jacksonville, Florida, construction company agrees that
business owners should be allowed to decide whether to allow weapons in their parking lots. “ The larger
issue is property rights,” he says, “ and whether you as a homeowner and I as a business owner ought to
have the right to say what comes onto our property.” However, Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley, a
Republican sponsor of legislation requiring that guns be allowed in company parking lots, begs to differ.
“ I respect property and business rights,” he says. “ But I also think that some issues need to
overshadow this. . . . We have a right to keep and bear arms.” Other gun advocates think that the
property- rights argument is a red herring. Corporations are not individuals, they argue, but artificial
legal entities, whose “ rights” are entirely at the discretion of the state. What’s really going on, they
think, is that some companies have an anti- gun political agenda. Property rights, however, aren’t the
only thing that companies are concerned about. Business and other organizations have a widely
acknowledged duty to keep their workplaces— and their employees— as safe as possible, and that
means, many of them believe, keeping their campuses free of weapons. There are more than five hundred
workplace homicides per year; in addition, 1.5 million employees are assaulted at work, many of them by
coworkers or former employees. Having guns anywhere in the vicinity, many employers worry, can only
make volatile situations more deadly. “ There’s no need to allow guns [ into] parking lots,” says the
Brady Center’s Siebel. “ The increased risks are obvious.” Steve Halveson drives that point home, too. “ I
object to anyone telling me that we can’t . . . take steps necessary to protect our employees.” For him
it’s no different from banning guns from his construction sites or requiring workers to wear hard hats. “
The context is worker safety, and that’s why it’s important.”
DI SCU SSION QUE STION S
1. Do you have a moral, not only a legal, right to own a gun? Assume that either the Second Amendment
or state law gives you a legal right to keep a gun in your car when you drive. Do you also have a moral
right to do this? Do you have either a moral or a legal right to park a car with a loaded gun in a
privately owned public parking lot regard-less of what the lot’s owner wants?
2. In your view, do employees have either a moral or a legal right to park cars with guns in them in the
company parking lot? If so, what about the property rights and safety concerns of employers? If
employees don’t have this right, would it be good policy for companies to allow them to stow guns in
their cars anyway? Do companies have good grounds for being concerned about weapons in their
parking lots?
3. Do you agree with the NRA that if companies ban guns from their parking lots, this restriction would
take “ a wrecking ball to the Second Amendment” or nullify the right of people to have weapons for self-
defense? Explain why or why not. In your view, have gun advocates been guilty of politicizing this issue?
Do you think state legisla-tures are right to get involved, or should the matter be left to companies and
employees to settle?
4. Because the workplace is the company’s private property, the company could choose, if it wished, to
allow employ-ees to bring guns not only into the parking lot but also into the workplace itself. Are there
ever circumstances in which doing so might be reasonable? Or would the presence of guns automatically
violate the rights of other employees to be guaranteed a safe working environment?
5. What would a libertarian say about this issue? What con-siderations would a utilitarian have to take
into account? What conclusion might he or she draw?
6. If you were on a company’s board of directors, what policy would you recommend regarding
handguns, rifles, or other weapons in employees’ cars? In making your recommenda-tion, what factors
would you take into account? Would it make a difference how large the company was, the nature of its
workforce, or where it was located? If you support banning firearms from the parking lot, what steps, if
any, do you think the company should take to enforce that policy?
7. Explain whether ( and why) you agree or disagree with the following argument: “ If employees have a
right to keep guns in the parking lot, then they also have a right to bring them into workplace. After all,
we’re only talking about licensed, responsible owners, and the same rationale applies: An employee
might need a weapon for self- protection.
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