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The passage of an Oklahoma law last year allowing employees tokeep firearms in cars parked on company property isn't OK withDavid Johndrow. "It's a bad law, basically," says the37-year-old co-founder of HRLogix, an Oklahoma City-based HRsoftware company with 20 employees and $3 million in sales.
Johndrow isn't alone. Last year, Pizza Hut fired a deliverydriver who shot and killed a pistol-toting holdup man. Thedriver's act was judged justifiable self-defense and no chargeswere brought against him, but he was fired for violating hisemployer's ban on guns in the workplace.
The issue of workplace firearms is heating up, with severalstates passing laws expanding employees' ability to carryweapons on the job, says gun-rights activist Alan Gottlieb, founderof the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington.Oklahoma has been joined by Ohio, where Gottlieb spearheaded alawsuit to relax gun laws, and Minnesota.
Gottlieb says employers have the right to prohibit guns in theworkplace, but workers should be allowed to keep firearms in theirparked cars for convenience and protection. If they're not,employers "could be liable for damages," he says.
A 2003 Minnesota law requires employers to let employees keepguns in cars in the employee parking lot. That law was later judgedunconstitutional--a decision now being appealed, according to MaryKrakow, an employment attorney with Minneapolis law firm Fredrikson& Byron P.A. Employers who want the law struck down areconcerned about retaliation by workers who have been disciplined orfired, Krakow says. "One fear is that a hot-headed employeewill go get that gun and return to the workplace with it," shesays. "Many employers say they need more latitude to ban gunsfrom the workplace."
A 2004 report by the Society for Human Resources Managementsuggests relatively few small businesses are part of that group--itfound 42 percent of small firms had no written policies on weaponsat work, compared to 14 percent of big companies.
