Glenn Beck: NRA President Marion Hammer

Audio Available:

May 14, 2008 - 12:48 ET

GLENN: Well, now, now there are companies that are saying -- for instance, a guy lost his job. He was a Pizza Hut guy. He went. He was carrying a gun. He's delivering pizzas. Now, I don't know about the neighborhood you live in. Maybe it's nice. You know, I'm not having a problem delivering pizza in a lot of neighborhoods. I'm really having a problem delivering pizzas in some neighborhoods. Guy goes to the door, guy who ordered the pizza, pulls out a gun, says give me the cash. He's threatened. He feels he's in danger. He pulls out his gun, he shoots him. Everybody in town is for him. He's fired. Not allowed to carry a gun. Now people are saying -- companies are saying, you can't even have a gun in the parking lot. Excuse me? First of all, I don't leave my gun in the glove box of my car. My gun will stay on me. I'm not leaving -- I'm not having somebody steal my car and then my gun is gone. But if I want to carry a gun, you know what? You don't want to have a gun in your building? Fine. I don't work for you. I'll tell all my friends: Stu, you do business with this company? They don't allow people to carry guns. They don't allow people to leave their gun, you know, in the car, locked up.

Marion Hammer, she was the first woman president of the NRA and she's with us now. Hi, Marion.

HAMMER: Hi, how are you?

GLENN: Tell me. How should we look at companies that don't let you carry a gun like Pizza Hut? Or I think it was Pizza Hut. Was it Pizza Hut? I think so.

HAMMER: Well, Pizza Hut and a number of other situations. And the way I view these giant corporations is out of control. They think they're emperors. They think that they have some mythical right to control anything and everything that goes on in a public access parking lot and that's absolute nonsense.

GLENN: Now, so what happens is if you work at, you know, XYZ store, you can't put your gun -- you can't leave your gun in the parking lot. What is their excuse for that?

HAMMER: They claim that they have an obligation to keep their employees and their customers safe and that somehow your personal, private, lawfully possessed firearm that is locked inside your vehicle in a parking lot poses a danger to their employees and customers. Now, you know as well as I do that these businesses are not providing security for their customers and employees when we are in their parking lots but now they don't want us to be able to protect ourselves.

GLENN: So is there any study or anything that shows that people have guns in their car, in parking lots, that they're somehow or another more dangerous? I mean, what prompted this?

HAMMER: What prompted it is basically an Annie gun philosophy upon which the Brady campaign capitalized. In 1997 they began a campaign to get corporate America to declare their businesses, their property, gun-free zones. The Brady campaign had been unable to ban guns or to take away rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns for personal protection. So they decided to go through the back door. They prepared an extensive document in excess of 80 pages in which they even included samples of signage that businesses could use to put up in their parking lots. And the corporations and the managers of corporations who had a political philosophy against firearms ownership started this campaign.

GLENN: Marion, two questions. One, should you leave your gun -- I would never leave my gun in the car. Should you leave your gun in the car; and two, how should we react as gun owners, how should we react to those businesses that say, no guns on the premises?

HAMMER: Well, with respect to leaving a gun in your car, in most states if you carry a firearm around with you, concealed, you're committing a felony unless you have a license to carry concealed.

GLENN: Right.

HAMMER: But it is also legal to have a firearm inside your private vehicle for transport and for self-defense and other lawful purposes.

GLENN: Sure.

HAMMER: So if an individual keeps a gun in the car for protection or is coming to or from hunting or target shooting, they leave their gun locked in their car, that's perfectly legal. And as long as it's out of site, a criminal has no way of knowing that it's in there.

GLENN: Sure.

HAMMER: If you have a license to carry a concealed firearm, a handgun on your person for protection, most license holders carry that firearm on the person and do not leave it locked in the car. There are businesses that post signs that say no guns inside their buildings. There are businesses that have now started posting signs in their parking lots. I'll give you an example. I frequent a particular restaurant here and I drive through there and pick up happy meals for my grandkids. Drive right into that property right past their big yellow welcome sign and get in the drivethrough lane and I'm sitting there one day and I look up and there's a sign on a post that says no firearms. Well, technically under the law when I drove past that welcome sign, "Come spend your money here," and then observed the no firearms sign, I'm committing trespassing.

GLENN: Do you go to that McDonald's anymore?

HAMMER: Nope.

GLENN: Marion, I've got to run. Thank you so much. First female president of the NRA, good to have you on, Marion.