http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46038

Joseph Farah

August 30, 2005

I had this thought again when I heard former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich say it's time to ban guns in the workplace.

"Listen to the evening news and you're likely to hear a grisly story about a disaffected worker or estranged spouse or dissatisfied client arriving at a workplace and going ballistic," said the diminutive Reich. "It's all too common."

Now, for starters, when we think of people going ballistic in the workplace, who do we instinctively think about? Answer: The U.S. Postal Service. Rightly or wrongly, we've even come up with a new phrase in the English language to describe this phenomenon – "going postal."

Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't these acts of homicide in the workplace generally involve people walking into an office or business with guns concealed and shooting them up? Or, do we have a nightmarish problem with people pulling guns out of their desk drawers and shooting it out with co-workers?

If my premise is correct – and it is – then what good would it do to ban guns in the workplace? Wouldn't it only make employees less safe – rendering them defenseless against the armed intruder?

But this is the kind of logic that escapes people like Reich, who, I hate to say it, are hell-bent on changing all that made America distinctive and great.

Reich cites as evidence for this crisis, a pseudo-scientific study conducted by Dana Loomis of the University of North Carolina and published in the American Journal of Public Health. Let me dissect, for those who care, the extremely questionable methodology of this study, which purports to show conclusively that homicide is five times more likely at a workplace where guns are permitted than in those where guns are banned.

You had better sit down for this one, because you may not believe it.

The study compared 87 cases where employees were killed at work sites in North Carolina between 1994 and 1998 and 177 comparable work sites where there were no murders.

Now think for a moment about the kinds of places – the kinds of businesses that ban firearms. Do you think of them as high-risk businesses? Do you think of them as convenience stores open late at night in urban areas? Or do you think of them as big corporations based in suburban settings where crime is low?

So, can we assume that the places where guns are permitted are already much higher-risk settings than where they are banned? Of course.

And Loomis makes no distinction about the kind of homicides that take place in these working environments. In other words, in his study, a high-risk, late-night convenience store held up by an armed intruder is no different than an office setting in which an armed worker draws a gun and shoots a co-worker.

Drawing on this flimsy, shoddy and politically driven research, people like Reich would presumably ban firearms in all businesses – banks, all-night 7-Elevens, maybe even gun stores, though my assumption is that they would eventually be banned altogether by the people promoting such ideas.

I have said this before and I will say it again: The only people safe in these so-called "gun-free zones," whether they are schools or businesses or churches, are armed criminals.

Criminals, by definition, do not care about laws. Only the law-abiding care about them. So, making more laws or rules and regulations that ban firearms in places only encourages violent criminals to do what they do – kill, rob, rape, maim.