by 340PD on Mon Dec 07, 2015 5:54 am
Back when the MCPPA of 2003 passed (the first time) my company (like many I assume) made record time in posting "no guns allowed" signs. They followed that up with a company wide email indicating that even though a law had passed allowing people with a permit to carry a firearm on their person , the company policy has always, and still did, prohibit weapons including firearms on company property. They wanted to stress to everyone and make sure that all employees thoroughly understood that this also included the company parking lot. They said under NO circumstances could anyone keep firearms in their vehicle as the parking lot was on company property. They even went so far as to point out (albeit incorrectly) that they also had the right to SEARCH anyone's vehicle at any time because, again, it was on company property. Well, me being me and having been there for quite some time, I felt the need to poke the bear just a little bit. I sent the HR person who sent out this lovely little email a response email letting her know that the carry law SPECIFICALLY allowed people to have a firearm in their car EVEN on company property. I told her my reason for pointing this out was that I didn't want the company to open themselves up to potential litigation by assuming that what they had said in their email was even remotely true, on either point (see, I was being nice). I was going to go a step further and point out that the "no guns allowed" sign they posted didn't meet the legal requirement and why. Then I thought, no, I'll leave that one alone.
As a humorous side note, I'd already pointed out the "car searching was illegal" bit a while back. In another email that I found rather humorous, HR let everyone know that it had been reported that someone had been stealing other people's lunches out of the company refrigerator. As such, they decided that as a means of catching the thief, they had the right to search people's desks AND their vehicles in the parking lot since they were on company property. I'm not sure if they thought the thief was going to hide the stolen brown paper bag (or perhaps half an uneaten sandwich) from the lunch they had illegally obtained, in their vehicle. To my knowledge the food thefts stopped of their own accord and they never needed to test the legality of searching someone's vehicle for illegally obtained food stuffs. I was actually kind of hoping they would cross that line just to see them try it.