Thursday, November 25, 2004

Odd admissions
Oklahoma just passed a law that allows employees to keep guns in their locked cars on company property. The law was supposed to take affect on Nov. 1, but has been suspended while a judge considers challenges by some large employers.

It's a classic case of conflicting rights. In a state where hunting is a religion and guns are as common in trucks as spare tires, many people take exception to being told they have to remove their guns each day before going to work. On the other hand, the employers want to have the authority to ban guns on company property. They don't want firearms to be too easily available when workplace conflicts break out.

This would be a fairly unremarkable news story in about three-quarters of the country, but in the AP story I found this interesting quote:
Democratic state Sen. Frank Shurden, a co-author the law, said Oklahomans need guns for protection. "You get out in the dark in rural Oklahoma, you better be armed and ready for action," he said. "There's no telling what's going to happen."

This is deepest red-state America, the heartland, God's country, the real America where "values" voters live, real salt of the earth folks who would give you the shirt off their back. And their own elected representative finds them so scary that he can't conceive of going out among them unarmed.

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