By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - November's killings at a West Chester trucking company helped make 2003 the deadliest year for workplace shootings in the past decade, an anti-gun group said Wednesday.

Sixty-nine people were killed and 46 wounded in 45 workplace shootings last year. Workplace shootings nearly doubled from 2002 to 2003, according to "Terror Nine to Five: Guns in the American Workplace," the report from Handgun-Free America.

"The unifying factor amongst all these tragedies is the availability of firearms, especially semiautomatic handguns, which are the weapons of choice for rampage and workplace shooters," said Chris McGrath, executive director of Handgun-Free America. The Arlington, Va.-based group favors a ban on privately owned handguns.

A National Rifle Association spokesman said his group has not reviewed the report.

"Any study that comes from a group with a radical political agenda such as theirs needs to be viewed with a jaundiced eye," spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

Westwood gun rights activist Glenn Kestler said it was silly to blame guns for the violence in West Chester and Cincinnati.

"Baseball bats, cans of gasoline, explosives, there's all kinds of stuff you can get in trouble with. I think handguns are just a tool," said Kestler, a director of the state's National Rifle Association affiliate. Kestler said the West Chester shooter could have driven a truck into the office to kill the workers.

Tom West is accused of opening fire with two handguns at a Watkins Motor Lines office in November. Two people were killed and three were wounded.

The group also cited a Nov. 7 shooting at C&D Drive Thru in West College Hill.

C&D's owner, Wes Han, said the landlord's husband was shot there but the shooter and motive still are unclear.