Sitting Duck Policy

In another “they almost got it right” story, the Arizona Daily Star reports that the company which owns and operates the majority of Pizza Hut restaurants in Southern Arizona will no longer prohibit customers from legally carrying sidearms on their property.

According to the article:

Patrick McKinney, vice president of operations for Tucson-based Pizza Hut of Arizona, said he began reconsidering the company’s policy of prohibiting guns after reading a newspaper article about the state’s new concealed-carry law.

That law, which goes into effect July 29, allows people 21 or older (and not prohibited from having a firearm) to carry a concealed gun without a permit.

McKinney and his staff held a meeting about the issue and began to remove the restaurants’ signs banning firearms during the first week of June, he said in a written reply to questions.

Unfortunately, the new policy applies only to customers. Employees will still be left sitting ducks while working for the company (on premises, or as delivery drivers). The article continues:

The issue may be particularly poignant in the case of Tucson Pizza Huts. In 1999, three employees of a Pizza Hut near the corner of East Broadway and Pantano roads were shot to death in an attempted robbery by two teens.

“We will never forget the tragedy of those murders in 1999 and what happened may have shaped our feelings about guns forever,” McKinney wrote.

The new policy doesn’t apply to employees, who won’t be able to carry guns at work. “For safety reasons we have always had a ‘no weapon’ policy (while working) for all of us at Pizza Hut of Arizona,” McKinney wrote.

One has to wonder who the Pizza Hut Employee policy is trying to “protect”. It certainly didn’t “protect” the three Pizza Hut Employees who were disarmed by Pizza Hut’s Sitting Duck Policy and were unable to protect themselves back in 1999. The Pizza Hut policy did, however, protect the assailants in that case.