Parking lot ban at hospital endangers patients & families

----- Original Message -----
From: (Name redacted at writer's request)
To: OFCC
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005
Subject: Parking Lot Ban
Dear Ohioans For Concealed Carry,

On 4-21-05 my wife had to go to the Riverside Hospital in Columbus, Ohio for a very serious spinal cord operation. The surgery was set for us to be at the hospital at 5:30AM that morning. It takes us around 45 minutes to drive to the hospital, so I woke up at 3:30 that morning and left the home at around 4:15AM, just to make sure we would make it on time.

Well...I got to the hospital and here was signs posted at the entrance and every single parking lot saying NO WEAPONS. I am a CHL-holder, and I had my gun with me. I sort of expected not to be allowed to carry it inside the hospital, but figured there would be no problem with leaving it out in my car.

As a result of this discriminatory policy, I had no choice what-so-ever but to drop my wife off and drive all the way back home to leave my gun, and then drive all the way back up to the hospital, leaving my wife all by herself in her great time of need (she was really nervous about having this surgery).

I looked over every piece of paper that she was given and the hospital even called our home a few days before the surgery to go over all her medical history, etc. and told us where to park and enter the building. Not one piece of paper that I read said NO WEAPONS and when they talked to my wife over the telephone no one said NO WEAPONS allowed or anything!

It is one thing to ban parking lots like malls to where you can just leave and go somewhere else but I feel that it is a whole different ball game when they ban a parking lot of a hospital. I believe it should be on the hospital's paper work saying that weapons are not permitted anywhere on hospital property and should really say NO WEAPONS in all their ads, like in the telephone book, etc.

Some people drive 1000 miles to visit family, and have guns with them for protection. What are they to do? What would a mother with a CHL do if on her way home from she gets a call from the hospital saying that their child has been in a very serious accident and they need to get to the hospital in order to sign a consent form in order for their child to receive treatment? This policy would mean they should go home first or park far away from the hospital, wasting precious time while her child suffers. No one ever knows when they will need to be forced to go to a hospital.

If these hospitals really cared about peoples lives they would not put these signs up banning guns on their parking lot, because examples like the two above happen every day and all day long at hospitals, and anyone who has been around an ER room knows this to be true.

My wife is going to have to stay in the hospital probably for at least one week or longer, and this makes me very nervous to drive up to visit her since I cannot have my gun in the car on the way to the hospital and have to drive through some very bad parts of Columbus. If I would get a flat tire or break down, the responsibility for my exposure to the possibility of being made a victim lies totally on Riverside Hospital.

This is very, very wrong that a person can not even have or leave a gun in their own car. I thought that doctors took an oath to save lives. By not even letting their patients have a gun in their car, they are breaking this oath.