A property proprietor certainly has the right to prohibit entry of anything onto his property, along with the people carrying it, but the law may also recognize that if the excluded item has a function to protect the rights of the visitor, such as medicines or firearms might have, then he assumes legal liability for protecting those rights at least as effectively as the visitor would have had he retained possession of the excluded item. That means for something like an open parking lot, the proprietor would need to provide armed guards for the parking lot and visitors to it. If such protection is only available inside the building, then it could be reasonably maintained that the exercise of his right to exclude items from that parking lot would expose visitors to a risk that would make him civilly, and perhaps criminally, negligent.
To make the issue more clear, let us consider medicines rather than firearms. Suppose the proprietor forbids all medicines from his premises, including the parking lot, but has visitors, whether employees, vendors, or whatever, some of whom have, say, cardiovascular conditions that require them to have or take medicine during the day. Now let's say that a visitor, complying with the prohibition, has a debilitating or fatal heart attack or stroke while visiting that could likely have been prevented had he been able to carry his medicine. Is the proprietor liable in that situation, or did the visitor relieve him of liability by voluntarily complying with his prohibition? Or was the proprietor obligated to provide the medicines to his visitors while present? Now suppose the proprietor is not a private party for which visiting is entirely voluntary, but a government entity that can require persons to visit, such as a court. f not visiting is not an option, then it would seem that the proprietor has a duty to protect if he excludes visitors from carrying the means to protect themselves. Whether that be firearms or medicines it it is difficult to imagine that the proprietor could do that better in most cases than the visitor could do for himself. -- Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------- Constitution Society 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322, Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 www.constitution.org [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
