If You Gotta Buy Gas, Go Conoco & Phillips 66

Just finished reading this editorial in the Times, Guns in the Parking Lot. Here's a piece of it:

With a sense of civics worthy of the O.K. Corral, the NRA announced a national campaign, replete with billboards, to urge gun lovers to bypass Conoco and Phillips 66 gasoline stations until the company drops its ban on employees' keeping firearms in company parking lots.

ConocoPhillips ran afoul of the NRA when it joined in a challenge to a law passed by the Oklahoma Legislature that would strip businesses of their gun-control rights on company property. The state gun lobby jumped on the issue after a dozen workers were fired at a paper mill for violating a ban on keeping guns in their cars parked in company lots.

So Conoco & Phillips 66 has managed to bring down the righteous wrath of the NRA. Why? Because those civic minded patriots at the NRA believe every good American should have a gun in their car wherever they are, be it on the streets or in the parking lot where you work. What kills me with this one is that while I was in the Navy standard naval base policy wherever you went was that no one was permitted to have a gun in their vehicle on the base, nor were you allowed to have a personal weapon in your possession while on a ship. I suppose that's something that dated back to the olden days and was intended to prevent mutinies or something like that, and I suppose the NRA is ok with that over stopping idiots with guns shooting at each other in the company parking lot - well, and really, how far would the NRA go in trying to boycott the U.S. Navy? But then why shouldn't high school students of legal age be allowed to bring their guns to school in their car - now there's something for the NRA to rally around!

I personally have an aversion to guns, in fact my understanding is that most Americans do as well, which makes the power and threat of the NRA such a puzzlement to me. The perniciousness of the NRA is in its perspective that guns are appropriate for just about any venue you can think of, and for their coming down on anyone who disagrees with this like a 600 lb gorilla. Well I forget why exactly we're supposed to be boycotting Exxon-Mobil (I'm sure they did something stupid, but again), but to make up for that I recommend that you consider buying your next tank of gas at a Conoco/Phillips 66 station where common sense thinking, like employees shouldn't be allowed to bring their personal weapons onto company property where they can then shoot up the co-worker or boss who pissed them off (like, wow, we've never seen THAT scenario before, right?), is to be encouraged.