When most Utahns hear "America Online," they think "Internet service provider." But gun-rights activists think "Second Amendment."

That's because of what happened at an AOL call center in Ogden in 2000. Three employees met in a company parking lot after work to go target shooting. A security camera recorded two of them transferring their guns to the third worker's car. Four days later, AOL fired the three for violating the company's workplace violence prevention policy. In 2004, the Utah Supreme Court upheld the firings, and gun activists have been loaded for bear ever since.

Senate Bill 78 is the latest attempt by legislators to keep employers and other property owners from prohibiting gun storage in vehicles in private parking lots. Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, the perennial sponsor of this and similar bills, argues that this is not a clash of private property rights versus the right to keep and bear arms. Rather, he says, it is a clash of real property rights versus personal property rights, that is, the right of people to keep their personal possessions within the vehicles they own, regardless of who owns the land beneath the car. By that rationale, hazardous chemicals, explosives or livestock in private vehicles could not be prohibited from parking lots.

Madsen undercuts his own argument when, in the next breath, he argues that such gun bans are wrong because, in effect, they prohibit an employee from carrying a gun for self-defense far beyond the parking lot itself. If the gun owner can't store his piece in his car, and he can't take it inside the workplace, what's he supposed to do? This really is about the Second Amendment, then.

While that is a dilemma, it falls miles short of any rational standard to overcome the private property owner's right to prohibit firearms on his own land. A business owner should be able to set safety policy in his own parking lot, and it is astonishing that the Legislature continues to entertain nonsense to the contrary every year.

The bill does include compromises. It would allow a no-firearms policy if a business provides alternative parking at no additional cost for people with guns, or provides a secured and monitored storage areas for guns outside the parking area. But that would cost too much for many small businesses. The bill also exempts schools, governments, religious organizations, detached single-family homes and facilities such as oil refineries that must forbid firearms under federal law. But that is small consolation to most property owners.

SB78 already has passed the Senate. It should be allowed to go no further.