Arizona Republic

The problem with gun nuts is that they're not nutty 100 percent of the time. This would apply to Rick DeStephens, a self-proclaimed "gunnie" who has taken up the cause of Shannon Flynn, a state

employee who has been told by her bosses at the Department of Revenue that she cannot bring the firearm she carries for self-protection into the building where she works.

Flynn was molested by her father, who is in prison but could be released in as little as six months. She's afraid he may come after her. The head of the department, Mark Killian, has offered special accommodations to Flynn. She could drive her car (in which she carries a gun) to a secure garage. From there she would be escorted inside by an armed guard. It's a reasonable offer, but Flynn would rather protect herself. And who can blame her?

"I plan to make life miserable for Killian and (Department of Administration head) Elliot Hibbs," said DeStephens, vice president of the pro-gun organization, Brassroots.

He added, "Killian is more interested in protecting his building from protest signs than protecting his employees from crime."

That's not true, but it's close. DeStephens and his friends are like a calendar I saw once at a gas station. It was one of those calendars from which printed sheets proclaiming the date are peeled away each morning. In this case, the only sheet left was "Dec. 31," with the word "Wednesday" printed underneath. It had been hanging on the gas station wall for years.

"The day of the week ain't always accurate," the owner said, "but the date's right once a year."

DeStephens' group believes the Department of Revenue building and others should have lockers at the front door where employees can deposit weapons on their way in and pick them up on their way out. But he doesn't stop there. He believes we should be able to pack pistols just about anywhere, anytime.

It's Apr. 4 on their calendar, just like ours, but the year is 1802.

"We are dealing with people who do not understand our constitutional right to bear arms," DeStephens said.

Kathe Chochrane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Administration, told me, Our policy is no weapons in the workplace."

What about using secured lockers at the front door? I asked.

"I guess you might want to look at it this way," Cochrane said. "If you have 60-some-thousand employees and they all wanted to bring their guns to work, you can't accommodate that. It's a safety issue. It's a risk issue. You need trained personnel to handle it and lockers for storage. So this is also a matter of money."

This is how the unarmed bureaucrats of state government shoot themselves in the feet.

I asked Cochrane if the state had ever done a study to find out how many of its employees would bring weapons to work if lockers were available. The answer was no. She also said that, as far as she knew, a situation like Flynn's had not cropped up in the last 10 years. So there's no good reason to prevent Flynn from handing over her pistol at the door.

"Gunnies" recruited by DeStephens have used their weapons of choice--the computer--to bombard Hibbs and Killian with e-mails. It makes them easy targets for bureaucrats and smart-mouthed journalists. But while zealots are easy to write off, they're not always wrong.

Personally, I can think of only one annual event when politicians and agency heads would need to worry about gun-toting state workers. The governor canceled it this year.

It's called Employee Appreciation Day.