What is the relationship between gun rights and property rights? Because of recent actions by a state legislature, it might be best to look at this issue through the lens of church shootings.
In October 2018, 11 people were killed and 7 injured in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In November 2017, 26 people were killed and about 20 injured in a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. In September 2017, 6 people were injured at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee, after a gunman killed a woman walking to her car and entered the building and began shooting indiscriminately. In June 2015, 9 people were killed and 3 injured in a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In August 2012, 6 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Sikh Temple outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In January 2008, 2 people were killed and several others were wounded at a mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
There is U.S. National Church Shooting Database that used online newspaper archive articles to document all cases of shootings on church property within the United States from 1980 to 2005. It recorded a total of 139 church shootings in which 185 people died, including 36 children. The database does not include violence at churches that does not involve guns (such as bombings), nor does it include places of worship of non-Christian faiths, such as synagogues or mosques.
What is surprising about these numbers is that there have not been more church shootings. There is no denying the fact that churchgoers are uniquely vulnerable to mass shootings. They are typically lined up in church pews from which it is difficult to exit. Churches generally don’t have security outside or inside the building. Many people are packed in a church building at one time. The times that churchgoers assemble are common knowledge. Churches are generally open to the public. Strangers are welcome to most church services.
Some churches do have security details and members who carry weapons to services.
But not churches in Virginia.
It turns out that Virginia has a law that “reportedly dates back to colonial times, which makes it a misdemeanor to carry ‘a gun, pistol, bowie knife, dagger, or other dangerous weapon, without good and sufficient reason, to a place of worship while a meeting for religious purposes is being held at such place.’”
The Virginia legislature, the General Assembly, which Republicans control by a slim majorities in the Senate and House, recently tried to repeal said law. Senate Bill 1024 simply reads, “Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia: That §18.2-283 of the Code of Virginia is repealed.”
According to Virginia Democratic Senator Lionell Spruill, “We are saying with this bill, we no longer trust in God. We … foolishly took prayer out of schools … and now we want to take God out of church. If there’s anywhere you can trust God, it should be the church. Let’s depend on God on this one. Let’s not take God out of church.”
The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, a coalition of more than 700 faith groups, opposed the bill and urged its members to contact their legislators, saying that worship spaces should “be holy, safe and a refuge” and “free of violence.”
The bill passed the Senate by a strict party-line vote of 21 Republicans to 19 Democrats. However, the bill died in the House Rules Committee. There was no chance that Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, would have signed the bill into law. In January of this year, he announced his support for a comprehensive package of gun-control legislation.
Whether one thinks that people should or shouldn’t bring guns to church is irrelevant.
Churches and other places of worship, just like clubs and fraternal organizations, are private organizations, unaffiliated with the government. Property is owned by the members of the particular entity, not a government entity. In a free society, the decision to allow or exclude firearms (or any other type of weapon), permit certain types of guns and ammunition, designate who may carry firearms on his person, and make rules and regulations for the carrying and use of firearms on the entity’s property is a decision that should be made by each individual entity, not government legislators, regulators, or bureaucrats.
But none of this has anything to do with church shootings, the Second Amendment, gun rights, gun safety, or the need for security.
It all has to do with property rights.
The reason that property owners in a free society decide if, when, and under what circumstances firearms are permitted on their property is that in a free society property owners decide if, when, and under what circumstances anything is permitted on their property.
It all has to do with property rights.
In a free society, what object someone permits or what actions are allowed on his property is his business as long as he doesn’t violate the personal or property rights of someone else. That is true whether we are talking about an individual and his home or a proprietor and his business. Some persons will choose to own guns; others will choose to never let a firearm on their property. Some proprietors will allow guns to be openly carried in their place of business. Others will never allow a weapon anywhere on their property. Some churches will prohibit guns on the church property. Others will restrict gun possession to members of the church only. Still others will permit only trained and designated church members to have guns on the church property.
Gun rights are subservient to property rights. That means that it would be just as wrong for the government to mandate that a business must allow guns on its property as it would for the government to mandate that a business must not allow guns on its property.
It all has to do with property rights.
But guns are just part of it.
In a free society where property rights are respected, proprietors could exclude any item, person, or activity from their places of business for any reason. That means that businesses could have not just a gun policy, but a clothes policy, a sexual-orientation policy, a religion policy, a facial-hair policy, a gender policy, or a race policy — for employees or customers or both.
It also means that laws against gambling, prostitution, housing discrimination, drug possession, and ticket-scalping likewise violate property rights, among other things.
The Democrats in the Virginia legislature are not just anti-gun, they are anti-property. As are any Republicans in Congress or state legislatures who support gun-control laws.