This has led local gun owners and activists to call on the Mall to repeal its longstanding gun ban. Minnesota legislator Tony Cornish is now drafting a law to bill that would force the mall to allow customers to carry in public areas of the mall.
"The situation with the Mall of America is completely ridiculous. The complete opposite of what they should be doing,” he said. “If we’re threatened with an attack of any type, the last thing you ever want to do is disarm citizens.”
Cornish is completely right about the stupidity of the mall’s gun ban -- researchers like John Lott have shown that gun free zones do nothing but attract killers and murderers.
But he is wrong to use government power to force the mall the change its policy.
Private property owners have the right to decide what items people bring on their property, no matter how wrongheaded. The Constitution and the Second Amendment are there to limit the power of the government, not there to give the government power over the individual.
Instead of trying to get a law passed, Minnesota gun owners should take an approach that is not only more constitutional but also more effective – boycott the mall until they come to their senses.
I don't live in that part of the country, but if I did, I'd shop elsewhere just because of the gun ban.
ReplyDeleteHow does owning the land someone is standing on allow the landowner to dictate what they may have on their person? (Keep your mall policies off my body!) Rather than prohibiting them from having such a policy, why not take the government enforcement of such a directive off of the table. Then they can either set up metal detectors - to considerable competitive disadvantage - or get over it.
ReplyDeletePeople bring outside food/drink into theaters and restaurants all the time. Only when the owner-disapproved item is a weapon do people start thinking it is a crime. This is backwards; they have a financial reason to ban outside food/drink, and no rational reason whatsoever to ban weapons by word only.