The NRA: More on the Side of Guns Than of Liberty in a Tennessee State House Race

Here’s how trespass works, in practice, at least in Texas:

The property owner has to give notice that entry on the property
is prohibited. This can be done with a sign, orally, or (in rural
areas, depending on your state) with fencing intended to exclude
people or by painting your trees or posts a given color (in Texas,
believe it or not, purple).

You put up a sign saying “Public Parking Lot. Entry Prohibited
If Guns In Car.” Or oral notice of some kind.

Now, anyone who drives into your lot with a gun is a trespasser,
and the property rights people are happy. What’s their remedy?

Without a showing of actual damages, there’s no damages that can
be collected. Effectively, no civil remedy without actual harm.

As far a getting somebody arrested, charged, tried, convicted,
and jailed for criminal trespass; technically, no “face to face”
request to leave is required if your property is posted or the
trespasser has notice (I only deal with this because I work in a
hospital, and we have to give a particular kind of notice, so I was
wrong upthread about this being a general requirement). Other
states may be different.

In Texas, outside of certain establishments, a “No Guns” notice
does not count if someone has a concealed carry permit, BTW.

If we’re talking about an ideal world, I could live with
property owners being able to trespass someone who carries a gun
after being noticed, IF the property owner took full legal
responsibility for their safety while on the property.

You can read the rest of this article at: http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/02/the-nra-more-on-the-side-of-guns-than-of

Short URL: http://www.txwclp.org/?p=14087

Posted by rbutler on Aug 2 2012. Filed under Libertarian News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry