Gun publisher bans guns in building

During my tenure with Krause Publications (now F+W Media) I was involved in the early 1990s with the acquisition and integration into the company of Gun List, a classified-ad newspaper for firearms hobbyists and collectors. 

I was publisher of the title and a growing outdoors division for several years.

Even though I never saw my father with a gun in his hand -- except a German Luger in a picture in his World War II photo album that showed him in a "liberated" German officer's cap with a sword in the other hand -- I   have had since childhood an interest in guns and the shooting sports (though I've never been a hunter). 

That interest probably stemmed from the Westerns that were ubiquitous on television in the 1950s and 1960s and a steady diet of war movies on late night TV.

So I enjoyed my time as publisher of the firearms periodicals and books at KP, and got to do some travel to large gun shows around the country, expanding my own collection of usable clones of historic guns.

F+W still publishes a line of firearms books and periodicals today. Some years back they acquired the iconic Gun Digest brand and continues to publish books with that cachet. Gun List was re-named Gun Digest and is now published in magazine format 32 times a year. The company also publishes Tactical Gear magazine.

I find it ironic, therefore, that every door on the company's facility here in Iola, Wis., carries a "No Firearms" notice.

When Wisconsin became the 49th state to "allow" its citizens to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, the enabling legislation gave property owners the right to forbid entry of armed persons to their premises. 

Gun Digest has always editorially opposed unreasonable restrictions on lawful citizens bearing arms, so the hypocrisy of its publisher denying this avenue of self-defense to its employees is particularly galling.

Most of the recent spree shootings by gun-toting crazies and political/religious extremists in our country have occurred in self-declared gun-free zones, where they knew the chances of encountering armed resistance were negligible. 

I'm frankly surprised that we haven't heard about lawsuits being brought by victims and surviving family against those who banned legitimate concealed carry in their venues, while failing to provide protection from law-breakers.