Guns, Employers, Mass Shooters, and Bullying

Curated Lifestyle

In every state except Montana (and it’s coming) an employer can fire you for any reason they want, including gun ownership.

You get sick and need the health insurance you’ve paid into for decades? You get audited, bullied, and fired.

Getting unemployment is almost impossible now. The last place I worked at made the argument that even if I had been harassed, as long as people of other sexes and races were being harassed, too, I wasn’t being singled out, and they won.

In 2023, there were 458 homicides at work in the United States.

This doesn’t get as much coverage as it used to, but we have the phrase “going postal” because of a series of incidents involving postal workers shooting their coworkers in 1986.

These people work a difficult job, but can retire with a pension after 20 years, and were paid more equitably in 1986. State and federal jobs—at least up until now—were almost impossible to get fired from, gave you steady raises as a matter of course, and these guys still went nuts.

Federal workers and others are now getting fired via email over the weekend, or show up at work to have a security guard tell them they no longer have a job.

They know what they’re doing is wrong, and don’t want an employee rightfully screaming and destroying cubicles, or in an open floor plan—which has been shown to make employees more stressed—taking their wrath out on whoever they can.

I knew my immediate managers typically didn’t have much power. The CEO—who in most cases never comes in and is impossible to reach—or some other person higher up decides firing 20% of their employees is worth a bump in their stock and a 10% bonus. Who cares if they need those people or end up going bankrupt? The have golden parachutes and are set for life.

I’m for registration and licensing, but have steadily become more ambivalent about guns. In NYC, we’re better off with fewer people carrying, but Upstate, some of those people need at least powerful rifles. There are bears up there, and many people are too far away from any police presence to expect timely help against an intruder.

Most mass shooters have legitimate reasons to be angry, but can’t get to the person responsible, misdirect their anger, or have their anger misdirected by politicians.

When I was a kid in the eighties and nineties, bullying was common, and most parents told us to handle it on our own. If you complained about someone bullying you—most of us didn’t—your dad or mom would tell you to knock the kid on their ass, and most teachers—especially PE teaches—would give you at least a few seconds before breaking the fight up.

Overprotected children appear to have lower self-esteem, poor coping skills, and higher levels of anxiety and depression, and the reality is that if you want a gun, you’re going to be able to get it, and this is a dangerous mix.

Employers and parents have created this reality, which makes employers feel more justified in firing people as impersonally as possible.

Do you think they want employees showing up with guns? Or even employees who own guns and keep them at home?

At least Mangioni hit an appropriate target.