The
Security Director NewsWire
Gun law fires up debate
By Andrea Gural
OKLAHOMA CITY - A proposed
bill that would protect companies from legal liability if an employee used a
firearm in an act of workplace violence was set to go before a state Senate
committee by the end of the month, but workplace violence experts agreed that
liability is only an ancillary concern when it comes to guns in the workplace.
According to state law,
employers in Oklahoma cannot prohibit their employees from keeping a loaded
firearm in their locked vehicles on company property. That law, however, was
put on hold by a federal judge late last year after several state businesses,
sued to overturn it.
Homicides in the workplace
numbered 631 in 2003, the first jump since 2000, according the U.S. Department
of Labor statistics, and firearms are known to be used in a majority of
workplace incidents. Which is why most corporate security policies have a zero
tolerance stance around having “ anything to do with firearms in or around the
workplace,” said Jim Pastor, president of SecureLaw, a Chicago-based public
safety and security consulting firm. “This kind of law further exacerbate the
attempts to secure the workplace in a way that makes a security director’s job
a lot more difficult.”
Residents of Oklahoma have
had a right-to-carry law since 1995, but a second law was passed last year
after employees of Weyerhaeuser paper mill were dismissed after guns were discovered
in their vehicles during a search for drugs. Now, such corporations as
Whirlpool, ConocoPhillips and Williams Co., with support from the State Chamber
and its 2,000 businesses in Oklahoma, have filed a lawsuit to have the law
repealed.
Ray Carter, media director
for the Oklahoma House, said that House Bill 1243, authored by Rep. Greg Piatt,
which would protect businesses and gun owners from liability if the gun was
used for harm, appears to have support in the Oklahoma legislature, although many
businesses are holding back from joining the second amendment fight in
Oklahoma, he said.