Arizona Senate Bill 1664: Gun-Free Zone Liability for Anti-Gun Cities

No, it is not “by default” that they accept responsibility. It is by fiat. You’re just making up an expedient doctrine you favor and then applying it.

Nobody is pleading with the public to engage their business with absolutely zero preconditions and no terms of service anticipated. Every offer has strings attached, even a general offer to come in and browse. “No shirt, no shoes, no service” ring a bell?

One of those strings might be banning your firearms. Others might be that you keep the noise of your group down and not bother other guests. Is that a violation of your 1st amendment right? Another condition is that your payment be denominated in local currency, or that it not be in cash at all.

The bottom line is that the “default” position you offer is itself just a past imposition when other do-gooders chose to stomp all over private property rights for some alleged public good. Now you come along and use that same approach, building on it even, to stomp some more. That doesn’t make it right; it just makes it, well, more, and the only reason you approve of it is because it’s in your favor. That isn’t a constitutional principle. That’s a compromise of your principles.

What Johnathan said.

If I invite you to my house and you misbehave I can disinvited you. If you refuse to leave you are trespassing. What constitutes “misbehavior” is up to me because it’s my property.

ToS are a thing. You get rowdy in a bar or restaurant and even if your actions are entirely legal the business can throw you out.

You wanna play in someone’s sandbox you play by their rules because it’s their sandbox. If you don’t like their rules then fuck off and find another sandbox or build your own. Regardless, you don’t make the rules and pointing to other abhorrent laws on “discrimination” doesn’t make it right, it just makes us hypocritical.

Jon & Strych9,

Disagree. Let’s take Starbucks, for example. If you have the natural (and usually recognized) right to defend yourself, and Starbux asks you to please come onto their property while at the same time telling you to leave your implement(s) of defense off their property, then by inviting you they agree by default to accept responsibility for your safety while you’re there. You can most certainly decline to patronize the store altogether, but since they’re openly advertising for you to enter the premises, they are therefore liable if anything happens to you that you otherwise might have been able to defend yourself against, had you been armed.

This is exactly the argument that has been taken up recently as relatives of wounded or deceased victims of shootings have brought lawsuits against stores and locales that forbade their patrons to carry guns for their own self defense.

I’m not sure, Haz. As a brick-and-mortar business owner, I’m not sure I want more stuff added to my slip-and-fall insurance. Gotta be a better way than give another slice of regulatory power to the nanny state.

Haz:

Do they accept that responsibility or do you temporarily forbear your prefered impliments in favor of freedom of association?

I would argue that reason dictates you’ve done the latter.

Starbucks made a set of rules which you knew in advance. They didnt change the rules for you specifically nor did they change the rules after you entered the establishment.

Therefore, you knew those rules and decided of your own free will to enter the establishment because you wanted something inside that establishment more than you wanted to keep the previously mentioned implements on your person. You made this decision.

Now, Starbucks, nor any other entity forced you to enter the Starbucks (unless you were like kidnapped and taken there or something) so your decision and your actions cannot said to be coerced. You have chosen freely and with foreknowledge of the rules.

On top of that you are, we presume, not mentally or physically incapacitated. If you were the latter you couldn’t carry a gun and if you are the former, adjudicated or not, you shouldn’t be carrying a gun.

This means that we have all the elements of valid consent. So I would argue that you consented to leave your burner in the car or at home when you entered the Starbucks. You were informed of the rules, capable of consent and made the decision free from duress, so where’s the ethical reasoning behind ignoring the rules imposed by a private property owner?

strych9,

Yes, I agree with all that you said in your comment above, and I appreciate that you took the time to make a coherent argument for it. It was well written and easy to follow.

I believe the only point where you and I diverge is the principle of truly private property versus a private business operating in public commerce. This was encapsulated in the section of arc’s text I copied, to show that I was referring to that concept in particular. If you invite me to your home for a private event and inform me that you don’t want me to bring my gun inside, then of course I must comply and accept the fact that I’m entering your property well-informed of the situation. But if a company is operating in the public realm and inviting the public to enter for commerce, then that company must adhere to the public’s rights. These rights are not absolute, as in the famous example of a person not being allowed to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater when no fire is present. But if an entity asks me to enter, and at the same time tells me they’re providing a safe environment (of which the absence of guns is their preference), then they are assuming de facto responsibility while I’m present at that place of business.

Haz:

This may just be a different opinion but I simply don’t see it that way provided a few things.

1) The company is privately owned and operated. That is, it’s not a government sponsored institution (in which case I think your argument is dead on for a variety of reasons).

2) The property containing the business is privately held. In this case it’s the owner that sets the rules IMHO, not the business. The business and the property owner have their own little legal arrangement which we call a “contract” which is, essentially law unto itself.

If these requirements are not met then all bets are off, but if they are:

Then I don’t think that the private transaction which takes place on private property between two private entities can or should be construed as “public”.

For example, a private sale of a firearm. We reject the idea of a UBC. We don’t suggest that one party is responsible for the safety of another either. If someone posts an ad on Armslist for a private sale we don’t consider the seller to take on the responsibility for buyer safety at the time of the transaction do we? Generally we accept the idea that this is a private transaction. BUT, it was advertised. It is a business transaction. It takes place at a designated time and location. So why does the brick and mortar “storefront” suddenly make this a “public transaction”? I don’t see how it does. Therefore I don’t see how switching “firearm” for “coffee” makes any sense.

Also, going back to the restaurant/bar analogy for a moment; you don’t have to break the law to be refused service or more service. Being rowdy or breaking a dress code is sufficient yet neither is a violation of law. If you refuse to leave at that point it’s trespass but that’s the point at which the law applies, and generally, if you leave when the cops show up and inform you of the potential of a trespass charge you are not considered to be breaking the law if you exit at that point. Now, if you carry on loudly outside you might get a public nuisance/intoxication or charge related to being a jackass in public but you will note that “drunk in public” doesn’t usually apply to being drunk in a bar because… the bar is private property.

I would tend to agree with some analysis done by noted jurists back around 2000; that the previous 40 years of jurisprudence essentially gutted the notion of private property from a legal standpoint and did so because the public liked the idea. I would note, as they did, that whether or not this is “good” is in the eye of the beholder but that anyone, under any circumstances, who describes it as anything other than a “loss of liberty” is incorrect, dishonest or both.

Finally there’s the issue of actors. You’re an actor, Starbucks is an actor and the shooter is an actor. Generally people are responsible for themselves, not others. Starbucks can be held liable for unsafe situations that are created by it’s actions when those actions do not require another actor. However, when another actor is required for the conditions to be unsafe then it’s not Starbuck liability. The shooter’s actions are required for their GFZ to matter in terms of your safety. The shooter pulls the trigger. Starbucks just sells coffee (and shitty food).

You entered the GFZ knowingly and of your own accord. The shooter attacked of his own accord. Starbucks coerced neither. They therefore are no more responsible for harm than the gun manufacturer who made the shooters firearm. They are also a victim, ethically speaking. We wouldn’t blame them if some psycho poisoned the water coming into the building or parked a VBIED outside. In both cases we’d blame the attacker. Not Starbucks or the fertilizer maker or the pesticide maker or the car company that made the vehicle that delivered the bomb.

Try as I might I cannot find a justification for holding Starbucks responsible for the admittedly tragic outcome of you choosing their establishment at the same time a shooter.

None of which, of course, is to say I support Starbucks having such a policy.

“…I don’t think that the private transaction which takes place on private property between two private entities can or should be construed as “public”.

That describes a garage sale. An entity that is recognized and licensed by local government to operate as a business open to the public is not acting in the same capacity. This is where you and I differ.

“An entity that is recognized and licensed by local government to operate as a business open to the public…”

I don’t see this as a differentiation because no one has ever managed to give me a reason why business licenses are actually thing. There’s no particular reason for them to exist other than as another way for government to extract money from the population. That being the case, I can’t see how they grant any moral authority or remove it.

It all comes down to, IMHO, ethics/morals. There are none that dictate Starbucks is liable for the actions of others. There are morals and ethics that I’ve outline above. Therefore any law that might say Starbucks is liable, IMHO, is an illegitimate law because it lacks any moral authority for being.

You’re correct, of course, that Starbucks (to continue using the example) isn’t generally responsible for the actions of others. However, if a company is open to the public, and advertises to entice you to enter their property for the purpose of public commerce, then you have the reasonable expectation of safety when on their premises. If another person also enters that property and commits a violent crime against me, it remains my own duty to protect myself. On this you and I surely agree.

However, as stated before, if Starbucks tells me they designate their property as a GFZ for the purpose of maintaining a “safe” environment for their patrons, then by default they accept responsibility for my safety while I’m there. In that respect, they are then arguably liable if an event occurs that may have been prevented if customers had been allowed the full ability to defend themselves as allowed by local law. If they do not designate their store as a GFZ, then they have not declared it as an intended “safe” zone, and are arguably not liable.

See the difference?

I think you’ll find that 2A supporters, for all their bluster about the Constitution, are really just as shortsighted and self-centered as anyone else, including the antis. Though they happen to be on the right side of the right to keep and bear arms, they are nowhere near above employing antis-style specious logic and outright intellectual dishonestly in pursuit of that noble goal.

Johnathan and I disagree about things from time to time but on this I agree with entirely.

Some people who are gun rights advocates, and generally Conservatives, talk a big game and they happen to be right in many cases but they don’t understand why (and many don’t care why).

Many lack basic principles, aren’t half as well educated on the topic as they claim and are more than willing to forsake what they claim to hold dear in order to achieve what they want today. Few are willing to stand up for the rights of those they don’t like or admit that people should be legally allowed to do things of which we might well disapprove. These folks are more than willing to say “What I like should be legal and what I don’t like should be illegal with the severity of the punishment being proportionate to the strength of my displeasure with the action in question”.

In these regards such people are no different than the antis or the Left in general. But, such people do happen to be right occasionally. It would just be nice if they could reason their way out of a wet paper bag.

Personally I don’t care for the hypocrisy but what really bothers me is the inefficiency. This people act with good intentions but still argue inappropriately which makes our overall job harder when we have to put out the fires they accidentally start. In a “soundbite world” this makes it very difficult to get the message out to the target audience because we have very limited time and we spend a lot of it dealing with bullshit deflections that the antis throw up. They know this and use it to great effect, you can see it daily on news “debates”.

UpInArms, I believe that the court ruled that the baker, an individual, did not have to bake the cake. A business does not have religious objections.

Throwing my hat in with Jonathan and strych9 on this. Ad hominem, appeal to authority, circular arguments, pick your logical fallacy. They are present on both sides in varying degrees, and fruitful debate gets flushed. Can’t make headway with suicidal anarchists regardless of the flag they fly.

Those inspection results are public knowledge, and in my little shit city, the newspaper takes delight in reporting them, including the lurid details, like living or dead rodents, where their droppings were found, and the same for roaches…