Corporate big shots challenge gun rights law

Get a load of this: Corporations actually think they have more rights than individuals!

Recently, Florida (a state that quite frankly is otherwise weak on populism and individual rights) enacted a law that lets folks keep their guns locked in their cars when they're at work, provided they own the gun legally and have a concealed weapons permit. Specifically, the law says businesses can't stop employees and customers from safely storing the gun in their own car while it's parked there.

This law helps reinforce what I believe to be a Second Amendment right. Without this law, employers could force workers to choose between their rights and their job by firing them if they don't stop carrying a legally registered gun in their own vehicle. There have been situations where people were forced to make this choice. In backing the new law, an AFL-CIO spokesman said, "We do not believe that private business owners have the right to force their employees or their patrons to give up traditionally protected rights simply to have a job or buy groceries."

But Big Business crybabies - who are always distrustful of democratic institutions - want a do-over. They abuse the property rights banner and howl about their hallowed "rights" to control employees' lives being trampled by "big government." Hate to burst the corporate types' bubble as it expands to head size and threatens to slime their posh surroundings, but individual rights are supposed to have dibs. That's why there's already environmental and labor laws governing what businesses can do. I don't think there's any state in America where you can fire someone for just any reason, because even the most pro-corporate states probably have antidiscrimination statutes of some type.

Corporations have no constitutional rights. None. Even a smaller business has no constitutional right to fire someone for keeping a legally registered weapon in their car if there's a law that lets workers do so. If Coprorate (sic) America believes in property rights so much, why don't they fight eminent domain abuse? A Tampa Tribune editorial opposing the new law is especially hypocritical: It sniffs that "businesses are entitled to set terms of employment" such as drug testing - but goes on to claim that "lawmakers have no business interfering with such private affairs" as whether a business can fire someone for a gun in their car. Then how is it not interfering with private affairs to require drug tests in situations where the tests are not related to workplace safety?

The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation are now suing to stop the new law, calling it an unconstitutional breach of their nonexistent "right" to fire folks for any reason. You read that right: A law that bolsters constitutional rights is being attacked as unconstitutional. The corporate empire has everything backwards!

Corporate America is behaving in the chickenshit manner I've come to expect. In their totalitarian universe, everything has to come from within the corporate world and nothing shall be outside it. Big Business wants every aspect of every employee's life micromanaged. When something threatens this control, they lash out - with lawsuits, corporate lobbying, and heavy-handed policies.

What's freedom? Among other things, it's not having to please greedy corporations.

(Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/488830.html;
http://cbs4.com/local/florida.gun.law.2.700860.html)