Houston – Butting heads with a corporate community it often is aligned with, the National Rifle Association called Monday for a boycott of companies that do not allow workers to keep firearms in the cars they park at work.
The boycott will focus most immediately on ConocoPhillips, NRA officials said. The Houston-based oil and energy giant has sued to block an Oklahoma law that gives residents the right to keep firearms in cars outside their workplaces.
The campaign was to be announced at a town-hall-style meeting Monday night by Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president.
In a statement, LaPierre said the NRA would urge gun enthusiasts to boycott ConocoPhillips products, ask retailers to push the parent company to change its policy and erect billboards targeting the company’s Conoco and Phillips 66 gas stations.
The billboards, LaPierre said, will read: “ConocoPhillips is no friend of the Second Amendment.”
“Across the country, we’re going to make ConocoPhillips the example of what happens when a corporation takes away your … rights,” LaPierre said in his statement. “If you are a corporation that’s anti-gun, anti-gun-owner or anti-Second Amendment, we will spare no effort or expense to work against you, to protect the rights of your law-abiding employees.”
The NRA hopes to persuade other state legislatures to approve laws similar to Oklahoma’s.
In a statement, ConocoPhillips said Monday that it supported its workers’ Second Amendment rights.
“Our primary concern is the safety of all our employees,” the company said. “We are simply trying to provide a safe and secure working environment … by keeping guns out of our facilities, including our company parking lots.”
Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, said companies that were fighting to keep guns out of their employee parking lots were not trying to overturn the Second Amendment or taking part in a “sneaky conspiracy to take away everyone’s guns.”
“Americans should be alarmed that the National Rifle Association’s agenda is to get as many (guns) as possible into as many places as possible – including the kinds of places that we’ve all got to agree are better off without a lot of firearms,” Hamm said.
LaPierre was scheduled to announce the NRA’s boycott effort in Idabel, Okla.
