‘We have an entire armed staff.’ Wisconsin boss gives employees guns for Christmas

A family-ran business in rural Wisconsin now has employees armed with firearms after they each received an early Christmas present from the company, reports the Appleton Post-Crescent.

BenShot, a father-and-son shop in Hortonville, gifted handguns “as part of an effort to promote personal safety and team building,” according to the Post-Crescent.

“For us, now, we have an entire armed staff,” co-owner Ben Wolfgram said, according to the newspaper. “I think that’s pretty good.”

To obey all state laws, the owners actually gave the employees a gift card to buy their own guns for Christmas, WISN reported.

“That way the background check was done by the store,” Wolfgram said, according to WISN.

Sixteen full-time employees received a gift card, totaling about $8,000, according to WISN.

Each employee was allowed to choose their own handgun, media relations employee Chelsea Priest told McClatchy. Some of the employees “already had enough handguns,” though, so those employees got a rifle, she said. Most of the employees got a handgun.

Of the 16 employees, two of them had turned down the gift at first, the Post-Crescent reported, but they have since considered getting their guns after taking a gun-safety course. BenShot had each employee take the class before they could get their Christmas gift, according to the newspaper.

“I want to make sure all (of our) employees are safe and happy – a handgun was the perfect gift,” Wolfgram said, according to WBAY.

BenShot creates “bulletproof” glassware for spirits and shots, according to its Facebook page. The handmade products have real bullets embedded into the glass, as seen on the BenShot website.

The BenShot glasses started as a family project, the website states, and then grew into a business ran in a “re-purposed furniture factory formerly owned by Thomas Edison.” This is the first time the family business has given guns for Christmas, according to the Post-Crescent. The company was founded in 2015, its Facebook page states.

The business encourages veterans to apply to work at BenShot, the website states, and all their products are American-made. Of the 16 full-time employees, “several” are military veterans, reports the Post-Crescent.

BenShot glasses are a “top-ranked hand-made product” on Amazon, WBAY reported.

Priest is grateful for the gift, according to WISN.

“For him to stand for something and for the company to stand for keeping us safe is really awesome for them to do that,” she said, according to the station.

This story was originally published November 14, 2018 at 8:04 AM with the headline "‘We have an entire armed staff.’ Wisconsin boss gives employees guns for Christmas."