Here we go again.

The Georgia General Assembly session is about to begin, and self-styled "property rights" advocates once again are criticizing the National Rifle Association for daring to urge passage of legislation that would remind Georgia citizens that their right to lawfully possess a firearm, as guaranteed by Constitution and law, cannot be arbitrarily denied them simply because they might chose to exercise that right in or on a publicly-accessible parking lot.

In a Jan. 3 column ("NRA's latest bill would trample property rights") against efforts by the NRA and what appears to be a majority of legislators under the Gold Dome, Georgia Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Joe Fleming decries the NRA's effort to "establish" a "peculiar new right" (emphasis mine). The "right" for which Mr. Fleming chides the NRA is in fact neither new nor peculiar under either federal or Georgia state law; and it is certainly not "bizarre" as further characterized by Mr. Fleming's overblown and vituperative rhetoric.

Despite efforts by Mr. Fleming and others to prevent the legislation supported by the NRA and many state legislators from being signed into law, the measure is actually quite limited and very measured - if, that is, one reads it.

First, of course, opponents of the parking lot measure might want to remind themselves that the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects against government infringing the inherent right to possess a firearm. While the Supreme Court of the United States currently has on its docket a lower federal court opinion from last year that found the District of Columbia's 30-year old gun ban to be unconstitutional, at least here in Georgia common sense and historical understanding generally hold to the notion that the Second Amendment - like, for example, the First - guarantees an individual right.

However, apparently in Mr. Fleming's universe, such individual rights as these can be arbitrarily denied by allowing governments or other entities (such as a business that maintains a parking area open to the public) to prohibit a person from exercising those rights on their property, even though that property is open to the public.

One might want to query Mr. Fleming and other opponents of the parking lot bill to determine if their expansive view of "property rights" would similarly empower the owner of a publicly-accessible parking lot to deny entry of a vehicle containing not a firearm but a Bible, the possession of which also is guaranteed by the Constitution. I suspect "property rights" purists like Mr. Fleming might squirm a bit on that one.

The fact of the matter is, legislation such as supported in Georgia by the NRA - HB 89 - does not infringe in any way the power of a "property owner" to use their property as they see fit. The legislation does not force the owner of a parking lot that is not open to the public to do or not to do anything at all regarding firearms or anything else. Nor does the measure affect the power of an employer to limit firearms in the workplace.

Let's quickly note some of the other things the legislation that has caused Mr. Fleming and some of his colleagues to become so incensed, does and does not do:

n The legislation simply reinforces the rights that law-abiding Georgia citizens explicitly enjoy, to maintain a firearm properly secured in their vehicle, subject, of course, to any otherwise lawful search.

n The legislation's provisions would not apply to businesses that maintain restricted-access lots, or to lots at sensitive sites such as defense contractors (Lockheed-Martin, for example).

n The proposed law would not prevent an employer from restricting an employee facing disciplinary action from bringing a firearm onto the property in his vehicle.

n The proposal supported by the NRA and others provides employers and property owners clear protection against liability for a person's misuse of a firearm that might be in their vehicle.

These are but a few of the common sense limits incorporated in this narrowly crafted piece of legislation. The legislation has in fact become necessary in recent years because businesses in a number of states are firing employees simply because those employees maintained a lawful firearm in their vehicle in a parking lot open to the public, and even though the person was doing nothing to harm anyone with the firearm - it was simply in their car. Allowing that sort of unreasonable action strikes many of us as - to use Mr. Fleming's word - "bizarre."


Bob Barr of Smyrna represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, and is a member of the board of directors for the NRA.

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