Those Edina Lutherans - Jeff

Those Edina Lutherans - Jeff Fecke wrote about my piece from the other day about the Edina Lutherans' lawsuit against the Minnesota Personal Protection Act. His permalinks are just as hosed as mine are, so scroll down if you have to (as this is written, it's still his top posting).

Jeff makes some decent points, regarding the potentially valid property rights concerns a church might have, requiring them to allow guns in their parking lot (albeit stored). He's right, to some extent - infringing property rights is a slippery slope. But we've slid a lot farther down it than that already; that same church must reserve parking spaces and build accomodations for handicapped people that may never attend the church.

But, as a small-"l"-big-"c" libertarian Conservative, I fundamentally agree with Jeff's premise - property rights are certainly vital. The church's biggest kvetch (at least in terms of stated goals) is that they aren't allowed to bar firearms in their *parking lot*. So the question is - do we allow churches to specify the parking lot as a *storage space* under limited, prodential circumstances, as a compromise between the rights of the church and of the legal, law-abiding permit-holder, or do you give the church absolute right to determine what people will bring into a peripheral part of the property (the parking lot) ? Should they also have the right to search cars for guns?

Then there's the obvious question - if a church believes that it's above state law regarding concealed firearms, what about when a church wants to eliminate Handicapped Parking? Or allow only Hispanics to apply for the church secretary gig? Or not pay the janitor's unemployment taxes? If a church can declare that their religious freedom trumps THOSE laws, too?

Here's another part of Jeff's post I wanted to comment on:

A failure of the gun law is that it turns the tables on private actors; it declares the right to carry a concealed weapon to be superior to the right to bar such weapons from your own property. It sets limits on what an organization can do to ban weapons, and limits where weapons can be banned.

I disagree - it doesn't declare the right to carry (in a legally-prescribed manner) trumps other rights. Rather, the law enumerates the extent to which other people can impinge on that right.

Finally - I don't care if a church wants to make its property, parking lot included, a no-gun zone. I won't be there, not willingly. But if I or any member of my family is on those premises, and his harmed as a result of a crime that might have been prevented or halted by a law-abiding citizen with a gun, rest assured - I WILL sue the church, and each and every member of the church's governing body, for every dime they have and will ever make.

I'll give it to other churches and charities, of course. Ones that respect the rights, intelligence and integrity of the law-abiding citizen.

Posted by Mitch at May 23, 2003 01:00 PM