M8-Atwood

2. As I do quite frequently, I will use my beliefs in classical liberalism to justify my position.   A person’s right to do something stops when it violates the right’s of another.   This assumption is necessary for rights to be equal for everyone.   If this equality does not exist, then rights do not exist, only privileges.   In this case, a company has owners, even corporations.   To use Mark Tushnet’s analogy, the owners of a company have the right to autonomy over their property, just as one would for a house.   Whether or not it would be a good policy to allow guns should depend on the situation.   A logging company in which workers have to commute to an area populated with dangerous animals should allow guns.   A company in a city environment may also justify guns if it is located in a high crime area.   However, if crime is likely to happen on company property, then the company is also obligated to implement measures that would increase safety (no different than minimizing risk for other hazards).   There definitely should be no concern about employees keeping guns on property in regards to employee-sourced violence since the employee can simply choose to ignore policy if they feel the urge to act out.

3. The NRA is wrong simply because they are misusing the Second Amendment, as they often do.   The Constitution, most especially, the Bill of Rights, is intended to limit government behavior in order to maximize liberty.   Employers, not including government agencies, are not part of the government and therefore are not bound by the same rules.   Of course, this is assuming a society in which all interaction is voluntary.   Being an employee of a company is voluntary.   If they don’t like the policies, they can quit.   However, society has devolved to the point were many things are not voluntary, which probably violates one or more of the other rights laid out in the Constitution.   For instance, education is a lawful requirement.   This leads me to answering question 4.

4. Since education is an involuntary interaction from the perspective of students, I would consider it a violation of the Second Amendment to not allow students to carry guns.   The same does not apply for the teachers due to the already mentioned concept of voluntary employment.   However, it would be good policy to allow teachers to carry due to the fact that the increased risk of gun violence from teachers is minimal compared to the risk of students already carrying.   The presence of guns in school cannot violate a right to a safe learning environment because the right to safety does not exist within the confines of liberty.   The concept of safety has such broad coverage that making it a right would inevitably violate everyone’s rights to everything.   Simply leaving the house is less safe than staying home, after all.   I should close this paragraph with a potential necessary clarification.   I am suggesting that students have the right to bear arms in school only in the context of forced education, since the government is involved.   Ideally, everything would be voluntary including school, which would make for only private schools.   In such cases, just like my argument for company autonomy in #2, schools would be free to establish a ban on guns just as students could choose to boycott the school whose policies they disagree with.