BELLEVUE, WA-Tuesday’s workplace shooting in Visalia, California produced “another victim of gun control,” said officials with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).

“California has among the most stringent gun control laws in the nation,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “yet those laws did not prevent the Print-Xcel shooting. All those laws have done is effectively disarm law-abiding citizens, leaving them at the mercy of homicidal lunatics.”

A gunman, identified as a fired ex-employee of the print plant, shot and killed one employee before taking his own life. Published reports quote plant manager Jeff Trump stating that he “heard the guy coming” and “got under my desk and called 911…”

“That’s what gun control has done,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron. “We’re now a society reduced to crawling under a desk, calling for help and hoping it arrives before somebody murders us. This incident, and every one like it, underscores a recent report from the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC) that admits there is no conclusive evidence that gun control laws contribute to decreases in violent crime or suicide.”

The CDC report, released earlier this fall, reversed long-standing CDC claims that more gun control might help stem violent crime.

“The flood of gun control laws in this country,” Gottlieb observed, “has not stopped workplace killings. While it is certainly true that many states have passed laws that allow citizens to carry concealed handguns for their personal defense, it is also true that years of anti-gun propaganda, combined with the passage of restrictive gun laws and the rise of civil litigation against gun makers and retailers have made companies fearful of firearms. The fear of lawsuits has bamboozled employers into forcing their employees to work in a defenseless environment. Employees are banned from having firearms, even in their locked cars.

“The legacy of gun control is that we have become a society of potential victims,” Gottlieb stated. “All too often, these laws have only worked to make innocent employees into unarmed victims. In California, particularly, those who supported increasingly restrictive gun control, and especially those who made it the law, should be ashamed. The blood is on their hands.”