The more I think about it, I really struggle to understand how the property owners rights are infringed at all by one of their guests having a concealed handgun. The property owner has the right to the enjoyment and profit from ownership of their home, store, factory, etc. I really struggle to understand how these rights are diminished in any way by the presence of a handgun that they cannot see. To me, this is on the same level as having a guest in your home who didn't vote in the last election, likes to wear inappropriate swimming attire, or the other examples I noted. Since there is no infringement of rights to the property owner, as long as the handgun is concealed, I just have a hard time justifying an infringement on the rights of their guests to keep and bear arms.G40yes wrote:Soccerdad, I like the thoughts that you laid out. Since IANAL there could be many complications that I don't see right now, but I still like what you described.We have a conflict of some extremely fundamental rights here. The right to life (means for self defense) vs the right to the pursuit of happiness (which was originally stated as the right to private property ownership). It is clear that neither right cannot be summarily disregarded, given the underlying importance of each. Rather, a balance needs to be struck ...
Now if the gun is openly displayed, then the math potentially changes significantly. In that case, there is a possibility that a store owner would not be able to profit as much from their property ownership as some customers could be scared away, or a homeowner could have a panic attack and not feel secure in their home. Yes, the underlying "harm" would be dependent on irrational phobias being present in others, but at least there would be some potential for harm / infringement of private property rights. Of course, even then a simple request for the person to leave could still eliminate any potential harm, unless the armed person refused to leave.
This lack of any real harm to the property owner makes it really hard for me to justify infringement of basic human rights in response.