Workplace gun policies linked to employee homicide
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Employers who permit guns in the workplace may inadvertently be increasing their employees’ risk of homicide, new study findings suggest.
“Our data suggest that, much as residents of households with guns are more likely to become victims of homicide, workers in places where the employer’s policy allows guns may have a higher chance of being killed at work,” write researchers in this month’s American Journal of Public Health.
While most Americans may keep guns on hand as a means of protecting themselves and their families, various researchers have shown that possessing a gun may actually increase a person’s risk of becoming a victim of violence.
Most such research has focused on guns in the home, however, although weapons are also kept in workplaces and other areas. Further, research shows that violence is one of the top causes of death for workers in the United States.
Dr. Dana Loomis and others from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill tested the hypothesis that employers’ policies allowing firearms in the workplace may increase workers’ risk of homicide. They looked at 105 workplaces where an employee had been a victim of homicide at some point between 1994 and 1998 and 210 randomly selected workplaces.
Thirty of the 105 workplaces where a homicide had occurred had policies prohibiting all weapons, as did 110 of the comparison workplaces, the researchers report. Fifty-seven of the workplaces where a homicide had occurred had policies that allowed weapons, including 41 sites that permitted guns. Sixty-seven of the comparison workplaces also allowed weapons, including 22 that allowed guns.
According to the team, homicides were about three times more likely to occur in workplaces that allowed weapons than in those that prohibited them. Workplaces that specifically allowed guns were five times more likely to experience homicide.
What’s more, employees who worked in places that permitted guns were almost seven times more likely to be a victim of homicide than were employees whose workplace prohibited any type of weapon, the researchers note.
“These findings bear directly on policy for workplace safety,” the investigators conclude. “In light of the evidence, it is reasonable to question the costs and benefits of policies permitting firearms in the workplace,” they write.
SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, May 2005.
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