It's Just Business
There’s no such thing as a “gun free zone.” As I’ve said before, they are only gun free until they’re not anymore…and that is usually because someone with murderous intent decided to walk right past that sign and start killing. At that point, the only thing gun free is the innocent victims with no means to fight back.
So why would any business owner or manager turn their business into one of these so-called gun free zones? They always say it is to promote a safe workplace, but that isn’t it at all…especially since all but one or two mass shootings in the past 50 years have occurred in gun free zones. Why would they do it? I’ll tell you.
They do it because they know that if a killer comes into your company cafeteria during lunch and kills 15 employees before committing suicide, that the company and its leadership will suffer little…if any…legal or social fallout. As far as legal liability, lawsuits against the owners of the property where such an incident occurred are rare. Successful lawsuits of this type are rarer still. So a company risks little legal liability by banning guns.
They also understand that as far as public perception of the company goes, there is also little risk to banning firearms. In fact, in the wake of a mass killing on company property, company leadership will probably be seen as sympathetic figures. They may give a solemn statement to the press about how sad they are over the deaths of their employees, and the world will feel sorry for them.
The only one at risk here is you.
Conversely, a company which chooses to allow its employees to carry firearms in accordance with the law runs a much greater risk. Imagine the same lunchroom massacre scenario, except this time an armed employee shoots back. The attacker claims one victim, but then an armed employee draws his legal concealed carry pistol and fires two shots in response. One shot kills the attacker, but one shot misses and accidentally kills a co-worker. Here we have only two dead employees, versus the 15 dead in the gun free zone, but now the company and its leadership are in big trouble. There will possibly be a lawsuit over the accidental killing of one employee by another, and it will be charged that the company is responsible for this death by allowing guns in the workplace. It will never be suggested that the actual cause of the death of the second employee was actually the armed intruder, who created the need for an armed response in the first place.
The company and its leadership will also probably not enjoy the sympathy of the public, but instead will most likely be trashed in the press and in social media as irresponsible and complicit in the death of the employee. It is quite possible that the head of the organization may be run out of his position by the negative attention.
So here we have two scenarios…one with 15 dead employees, and another with two dead…and the version with the highest body count actually works out better for the company. You see, business is all about the bottom line, and the bottom line here is that a business and its leaders actually risk less by keeping its employees defenseless. Never mind the risk to individual employees, denied the right to defend themselves. More employees may die in the company’s “gun free zone,” but the cold calculus of risk assessment says that even with a higher body count, the company fares better as an organization. Understand that although they may tell you they ban guns for your safety, they are lying. The truth is that they have simply concluded that it would be better to suffer multiple shooting victims than to risk lawsuits and bad press. It’s just business…and that business is more important to them than your life.
Yeah, if you’d just go ahead and leave your gun at home, that’d be great.
Originally published at BlackManWithAGun.com on December 8, 2017.
