Ooooh, strap in, I've got a long one here.
Last year, when I still was in Kentucky, I had a perfect example of this situation happen to me.
At the time I worked for a restaurant and the restaurant had a "bring a weapon and you are fired" policy in effect. Kentucky law backed them up, as it's considered private property, and owners of private property are considered within their rights to restrict people/employees from carrying concealed there.
Well, I didn't like this one bit, and as a CCW holder, was pretty pissed. So, every time I went to work, the USP stayed in the car.
Naturally enough, it didn't do me a lick of good when the restaurant was robbed. I, and 10 other employees were taken hostage by two gunman, one of whom proceeded to single me out, put a gun to my head, and used me to force his way into the office. Upon entry, he pushed me out of the way, and concentrated on the manager, knocking him down (1). He then got the other 2 employees in the office to lay down on the floor (2,3,4), and got the manager to open the safe (5,6). I meanwhile was crouched in the corner, memorizing every detail about the guy, and looking for an opportunity. He told us to all lay down on the floor, (7) and finally noticed I wasn't lying down yet and shoved me prone. He then told us to put our hands behind our backs.
At that time I thought for sure we were going to be executed. He repeatedly put his gun to each of our heads, as if trying to convince himself to do it. He finally grabbed the loot, ripped out all of the phones, and ran out. I immediately hit the panic alarms and after bringing the manager out of lala land, checked on the rest of the employees, who were fine. As it turns out, the manager had a panic button on him the whole time, but couldn't press it because he was wearing it backwards (
!)
The criminals had all fled by that time.
The police later caught the guy, and the deposition that I gave really helped convict his sorry ass, especially since I had given so many details about him.
But, what pisses me off to this day is that I had no less than 7 clear opportunities where I could have drawn my firearm from it's holster and shot the gunman without injuring anyone else. I'm talking a clean line of fire, no chance of missing (distance of < 7 feet) and the gunmans firearm was pointed in a safe direction.
Instead, I was disarmed by my then companies policy and at the mercy of the criminals. Yeah, that no weapons policy made it safe at the restaurant:
safe for the criminals.
I brought up this situation to everyone from the manager to the owner of the company, and they made no significant changes to the company policy.
I didn't stay long at the restaurant after that, and the next one I worked at had a similar policy. Fortunately, the manager there and I have the same viewpoints and he said "You cannot carry a firearm while you are working here, it's against company policy, I've talked to everyone including the company head of security and president. That being said, off the record, I haven't been without a firearm for the last 15 years....(wink wink, nudge nudge)."
No problem with me there!
So, it's all a matter of what's your life worth to you? If you have a good enough concealment rig, you shouldn't have to worry about it.
I consider myself very lucky to have survived this, and had nightmares for a few months. I was less scared during deployments when I was in the military, that should tell you how much this sucked.
Your company policy may say no, but I'll bet a few wrongful death lawsuits would be a lot more expensive than your being able to actually do something.
Spark
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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
www.bladeforums.com