USCGELECTROTECH wrote:
FIREARMS & WEAPONS
The possession of firearms and/or weapons on Company premises and property or when acting as an agent while conducting Company business is prohibited, regardless of having a permit with the exception of the security officers. Violations of this policy will result in disciplinary action, up to and including immediate termination.
This is one of those issues that really gets under my skin. Ties in with campus carry and "gun free zones". I understand the supposed "logic" and legal cover that is going on with these decisions. These large entities are scared that they could be held legally liable if someone shoots someone else on their property, especially if that someone works for them. But there is another side to the legal liability, IMHO. And I'm afraid it is going to require a tragedy, and a lawsuit filed by a survivor against a company or university, for these giant entities to understand the error of their ways.
IANAL, but I'd love for some of the lawyers among us to chime in on this. I worked a long time in the newspaper business and once wrote an article while in college about a lawsuit filed against the school on the basis of "premises liability". The main point of the lawsuit involved a woman who'd been sexually assaulted in her dorm room. The assailant had gained entry to the dorm through a back door that had been either broken or propped open (don't remember exact details). The lawsuit claimed the university had been deficient in providing to this woman a customary/rudimentary level of expected safety inside this dorm because of negligence in maintaining and/or monitoring the lock on this back door.
After I quit newspapers, I worked for five years in retail/commercial property management. The horror stories you hear in that business of someone simply slipping and falling on your property and suing a company are staggering.
So my question/scenario is this, why would this same legal liability not also apply to a company that willfully DISARMS its employee who is then injured or killed by an attacker who the employee may have been able to fend off if they had not been DISARMED by their company. This seems especially egregious in the above quoted case of "or when acting as an agent while conducting Company business ". I used to drive all over the state of Texas for a company. The entire time I was driving to and from different locations I was technically "acting as an agent" of the company. My company didn't have a policy written like above (and if they had I would have ignored it anyway, at risk to my job). But in the above sited case, what if an employee with CHL is assaulted while on "company business" and has no way to defend himself/herself. Isn't the company here LEGALLY LIABLE for denying the employee his/her choosen method of self defense?
I fear that this issue will only be resolved if a CHL holder is KILLED while "on the job" and DISARMED by such a ridiculous company policy.
