September 19, 2005 ED0919
Neil
Mahmoud had every reason to live. Newly married and on the verge of a career as
a computer programmer, the 23-year-old student saw little peril in his job at
an Apple Valley convenience store. The job entailed ejecting the occasional
troublemaker, of course, and just this July Mahmoud tossed out two young men
who tried to rob the place with a pellet gun. But the neighborhood was regarded
as supremely safe, and locals were shocked late last month when Mahmoud was
found on the shop floor bleeding to death from a gunshot wound. How could such
horror invade a tranquil town?
It
invaded not because a criminal came to call, but because the store's owner had
recently purchased a gun. The weapon was meant to deter robbers and protect
employees, but -- as too often is the case -- ended up underwriting a tragedy.
The person who shot Mahmoud, police have determined, wasn't an intruder. All
evidence suggests that Mahmoud shot himself -- accidentally.
The
accident may seem a fluke, a rare and unfortunate happenstance hardly worth a
second thought. In truth, Mahmoud's needless death vividly illustrates the
folly of counting on guns for safety. Thousands of accidental gun deaths occur
in this country every year. The key to reducing the number is clear.
More
than a decade ago, a study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that
private gun ownership heightens a household's risk of homicide threefold and
raises the likelihood of suicide five times above that of a gun-free household.
In
short, having a gun close at hand is generally more dangerous than not having
one. Plain logic suggests that this is true not just on the home front but in
the workplace as well -- and research bears out the speculation. Workplace
violence has become an American commonplace, and those who study it insist that
blessing the presence of guns on the job can only bring more bloodshed.
As
researcher Dean Schaner has argued in a book about employer liability, "It
is far more foreseeable that an employee will be injured in a workplace full of
guns and an environment reminiscent of the Old West, than one in which weapons
are prohibited."
All
tragedies give rise to a flood of "if onlies." Surely all who cared
for Neil Mahmoud are consumed with thoughts about how his life might have been
saved. Yet such thoughts should preoccupy not just those mourning this charming
young man, but all Minnesotans. This tragedy teaches a lesson to which
employers -- and all of us -- should hold fast: To keep the workplace safe,
banish weapons.
Source: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5619483.html