Why Businesses Must Recognize the Individual's Right to Carry.....

At some level, I have always known this to be true, but the recent situation with Frank Eckl, a disabled veteran who was denied his civil and legal right to be accompanied into the eating area of a Grand Rapids, MI, area restaurant by his service dog, Spruce, brought this issue into clearer focus.  You see, our right to self-defense is as much a civil right as is our right to be accompanied into a business by a service animal, or the right of minorities and women to have access to privately-owned businesses and clubs.  It is as critical a civil right as our rights of speech, religion, association, press - all of the rights protected under the Bill of Rights, which are all summed up as our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The fact that self-defense - at any place and any time - is a civil right has gotten lost in the emotional arguments advanced by those who would selectively determine which rights they choose to allow us to exercise.  The laws exist to protect those rights, and they are CIVIL rights before they are LEGAL rights.

So when we make the argument that we cannot legally mandate that an owner of a privately-owned business/manufacturing facility/place of commerce or employment allow someone who is exercising their right to self-defense access to their property while carrying on their person the means to protect that right, the argument doesn't hold up.  We have hundreds of laws, both state and federal, that override those private property rights, especially when the private property is a business/manufacturing facility/place of commerce or employment, to insure that the civil rights of patrons and employees are recognized and protected.  Our laws tell the owners of these private properties that they must admit service animals; they must admit minorities; they must build their properties in such a way as to accommodate the rights of the disabled to have full access to their private property, including the kinds of bathroom fixtures they must provide, the width of doorways, or the number of parking places that are reserved for their exclusive use - just to give a few examples.  These laws not only tell them what they may or may not do on their privately-owned property, they also require them to make such provisions at their own expense and subject them to legal penalties if they fail to make such provisions.

So why must the owners of such privately-held properties be required to allow a citizen carrying their legally-owned sidearm onto their property?  Because civil rights are our God-given, natural rights, and the law does not allow them to pick and choose which civil rights they will allow to be exercised.