Are guns at work ever a good idea? Most sensible people would quickly say no, but good sense sometimes gets sidetracked, as it recently did in Florida.

Earlier this week, Gov. Charlie Christ signed a bill “that will allow Florida residents to keep guns locked in their cars at work.” The new law doesn’t take effect until July, and will likely be challenged in court, but according to a story in The Miami Herald,  “Under the new law, businesses cannot prohibit employees or customers from keeping a legally owned gun locked inside their cars, as long as the owner has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

Businesses in Florida are worried—rightly, I think—that letting workers have easy access to firearms in the workplace is not a good idea. In fact, both the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation have hired legal counsel to sue the state over the new law.

We’ve written before about the Florida debate over guns in the workplace, and also about the how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver ruled that there was no right in Oklahoma to have access to a firearm at work, so this isn’t a new issue. What is new is that Florida seems to be well on its way to joining Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi as states where the potential for workplace violence just got kicked up quite a few notches.

Carl Hiaasen, the great novelist and Miami Herald columnist, had his own unique perspective on the issue. “After years of wimping around, Florida lawmakers finally passed a law that will allow you to bring your favorite firearm to work, providing you leave it locked in your vehicle,” he wrote.

“In the past, deranged employees who wanted to mow down their boss and colleagues had to drive all the way home to fetch their guns. It was the waste of a perfectly good lunch hour, not to mention the gasoline,” he added.  “Soon, however, any simmering paranoid with a concealed-weapons permit will legally be able to take his firearms to work. If a supervisor rebukes him for surfing porn sites, or a co-worker makes fun of his mismatched socks, he can simply stroll out to the parking lot and retrieve his Glock or AK-47 (or both) to settle the grievance.”

I can see Hiaasen’s point, and it hits home to me because I used to work with a guy who did a lot of hunting who just happened to carry his rifle in the trunk of his car—that he drove to work. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he could get angry and scary on occasion, and that’s not a good combination for someone packing heat in their car.

My guess is that Florida’s new gun legislation, dubbed the “Disgruntled Workers’ Speedy Revenge & Retaliation Law” by Hiaasen, will get held up for a few years, or more, as the courts work it out. Maybe more sensible heads will prevail in the end—at least I hope so. But I’m not holding my breath. After all, Florida is a state where many people still haven’t figured out how to vote. And that doesn’t give me confidence that they will figure out why guns in the workplace just makes no sense at all.