Florida: Call to Action!

[camacho]

From todays NRA email. Let's start emailing those folks and get this thing passed.

Florida: Call To Action!

“Guns-Locked-Up-In-Your-Car-Bill” Needs Your Help!

Email The House Environment & Natural Resources Council Today!



Date: February 28, 2008
TO: USF & NRA Member and Friends
FROM: Marion P. Hammer
USF Executive Director
NRA Past President



House Bill 503 has been filed by Representative Greg Evers (R-Milton).



Representative Stan Mayfield, Chairman of the House Environment and Natural Resources Council, described the bill in a no-nonsense manner recently when speaking to the press. Chairman Mayfield said:

"Everyone keeps calling it the guns-to-work bill. The fact of the matter is it's the guns-locked-up-in-your-car bill."

The bill protects your right to have a firearm locked in your vehicle for self-defense and other lawful purposes when it is parked in a public accessible business parking lot.

HB-503 has been referred to Chairman Mayfield's Council where it can be scheduled for a hearing and vote at anytime after the 2008 Legislative Session begins on March 4th.

It is time to start sending email to members of the House Environment and Natural Resources Council to let them know how important this bill is to law-abiding gun owners who carry firearms in their vehicles for protection and other lawful purposes.

Please immediately send emails to members of the Council and URGE THEM TO SUPPORT HB-503.

Below is a list of the email addresses of those you need to contact.

IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR EMAIL PUT:

PLEASE SUPPORT HB-503 the "Guns-locked-up-in-your-car bill."

(To send one email to all committee members at the same time, block or highlight the entire list and then copy and paste the block into the address section of the email.)

House Environment & Natural Resources Council

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Click here for a copy of HB-503, please click here: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Secti...ocumentType=Bill&BillNumber=0503&Session=2008.

For more information on the issue, please click here: http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=244&issue=53.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

This bill will stop business entities from searching private vehicles and violating the constitutional rights of customers and employees.

Your Second Amendment rights are at the very heart of this issue. In addition to prohibiting searches of private vehicles in parking lots, the bill will also prevent businesses from asking customers or employees to disclose what personal private property is stored in a private vehicle and prevents action against customers and employees who refuse to divulge that private information. Further, it prohibits action against a customer or employee based on information provided by a third party.

Some Florida businesses are trying to ban guns in cars in parking lot used by customers and employees. They are discriminating against people who exercise their constitutional rights – they are violating the constitutional rights of gun owners and Florida law.

Corporate giants have been trampling constitutional rights. Some are even attempting to coerce and intimidate gun owners into giving up constitutional rights as a condition of employment.

Your Rights are in Danger!



(1) YOUR Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms - to have firearms in your vehicle for self-defense and other lawful purposes must be protected from anti-gun businesses;

(2) YOUR property and privacy rights - against searches of your private vehicle in parking lots must be protected from anti-gun businesses;

(3) YOUR right to freedom - from coercion, intimidation and termination of employment for exercising constitutional rights by anti-gun employers must be preserved; and

(4) YOUR right to meaningful self-protection - must be maintained regardless of where you park your car.

This bill protects your right have a firearm in your locked vehicle for lawful purposes and to park your vehicle in parking lots when shopping, working or transacting business.

Carrying firearms in a vehicle for hunting, target shooting or protection of yourself and your family obviously means you can leave that firearm locked in the vehicle in a parking lot when you go grocery shopping, to the doctor's office, to the movie theater, to visit a sick friend in the hospital, to rent a movie, to the shoe store or anywhere else normal people travel to conduct business.

Florida law, the U.S. Constitution, and the Florida Constitution clearly and unequivocally give law-abiding citizens the right to have firearms in their vehicles for lawful purposes.

Since there are CURRENTLY NO PENALTIES for this law, numerous businesses are violating the law and are banning firearms in their parking lots. Some gun ban policies apply to customers and employees.



Please continue to check www.NRAILA.org for updates on House Bill 503.

 

[xsquidgator]

Bump.

Emails sent to all the reps listed. I also forwarded to my wife and several other gunowners I know who don't normally get active. Rock their world! We have a chance at getting this passed if they think people care.

 

[emb]

Just an update:

Bill would allow Florida residents to take guns to work
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Florida residents would be able to keep firearms in their vehicles while at work under a bill approved by a House council Wednesday, the first time the Legislature has taken up the issue this year.

A similar bill failed in a committee last year, though it didn't require the gun owner to have a concealed weapons permit, as this year's bill does.

Both sides of the issue agree that the proposal comes down to a matter of property rights. The bill's backers say an individual has the right to carry a firearm in his or her private vehicle. Opponents say business owners have the right to prohibit guns on their property.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker, argues employees and customers have a Constitutional right to carry firearms. Businesses can't guarantee a person's safety at work, and people should be able to keep guns for protection, he said.

But the bill isn't about a person's right to have a gun, said Randy Miller, a vice president of the Florida Retail Federation.

"It's about the ability of employers to establish work rules," Miller said.

Like most members of the business community, he said an employer's property rights supersede an employee's privacy rights.

The Florida AFL-CIO agrees that the issue isn't about guns but has reached a different conclusion. A person's Constitutional rights, like having a gun, shouldn't end when a person enters a business, said Rich Templin, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO.

"Big corporations are basically saying that your rights as citizens stop at the boundaries of our property," Templin said. "If you want to have a job here, you have to give up some rights. If you want to shop here, you have to give up some rights."

The bill states that no business may prohibit any employee or customer from keeping a legally owned gun locked inside his or her car, as long as the gun owner has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. A similar bill that lacked the requirement for gun owners to hold concealed weapon permits failed last year less than a week after 32 people were shot at Virginia Tech University.

A National Rifle Association lobbyist, Marion Hammer, said the association had not yet decided whether to support the bill. The association supported last year's bill but will have to consider further whether they support the concealed weapons permit requirement in this year's bill, Hammer said.

The House Environment & Natural Resources Council approved the bill (HB 503) with a vote of 11-6. The bill will next go to the House floor, but an identical bill (SB 1130) in the Senate is awaiting a committee hearing.

 

[Dave P]

Done!

"This is a good to bill to help protect the law abiding citizens of this great state. The rights of the individual have to take precedence over those of business owners and corporations. Those owners can't discriminate based on race, so why should we allow them to discriminate on legally owned private property (weapons)?

Pls ensure that it passes!"