BenShot, a Wisconsin gift company that manufactures novelty drinking glasses embedded with bullets so they look as if they'd taken a shot, gave all its employees the handgun of their choice for Christmas.
Two of BenShot's 16 employees, who include veterans and are evenly split between men and women, turned down the offer at first but have now reconsidered after taking a gun safety course that was required of them by the company's owners, local station 13 News Now reported.
"I want to make sure all [of our] employees are safe and happy—a handgun was the perfect gift," Ben Wolfgram, a co-founder of the father-and-son run BenShot, told WBAY.
Wolfgram told 13 News Now he was not worried about workplace violence, despite regular mass shootings in the U.S., because his staff knew each other well. "For us, now, we have an entire armed staff. I think that's pretty good."
Wolfgram told WISN 12 News that his employees could choose the gun they wanted and then were given gift cards to make the purchase so the retailer would be the one to carry out the background checks.
"There are two things, I got two motivators," Wolfgram said. "One, we thought it would be good for everybody's safety to have a handgun in the home. And then also, it's kind of fun. So we have company outings planned for going to the shooting range and this kind of thing."
He also said that if he gave staff a cash bonus it may have been used to pay bills, whereas this is a "way they can treat themselves to something."
Chelsea Priest, who handles BenShot's media relations, told WISN 12 News that after receiving her new gun she told her bosses: "Thank you so much for empowering us not to be victims, because you never know.
"Obviously you see in the news all the time you know stuff happens and it's a tragedy that things do happen. But for [Ben] to stand for something and for the company to stand for keeping us safe, it's really awesome for them to do that," Priest said.
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