Tequila Mockingbird writes
I understand your point. The point I was trying to make is that the Constitution protects your rights vis a vis the government, and the enumerated rights in the Constitution are rights that the government may not infringe on. When you are invited to someone else's property, it's on the understanding that you will follow the rules that the property owner has laid down: no smoking, no profanity, no drinking, no firearms, whatever. All of these prohibitions might arguably run afoul of some constitutional right if they were exercised by the government, but a private property owner is within his rights to enforce any of them.
This is half correct. Those rules function just fine with respect to a person's dwelling.
However, a business is different. A business isn't allowed to hang out a sign that says "no coloreds" or "Catholics ONLY" for customers, or to place similar restrictions who they decide to hire or not.
Further, they are required to have insurance, x amount of fire extinguishers, exit signs, smoke detectors, etc etc.
If not, the 'punishment' is revocation of the business licence. I think in addition to all the other demands, to keep your business licence, one should also not be allowed to bar legal law abiding gun carrying citizens from entering armed, as long as they aren't causing a disturbance.
Now, the whole situation isn't perfect. In a libritarian ideal, there would be no business licence, and a business would be free to have no smoke detectors and ban methodists and anyone who has a last name starting with V, and anyone who has a handgun or who had premarital sex.
But that isn't where we are now. If we are going to have business lisences at all, and we are going to tie those lisences to safety AND tolerance of consitutionally protected differences, then we need to do the same for gun rights and gun owners as well.