Thank you, village of Oak Park, for the Be SMART Week proclamation.
My friends, Christopher and Darius, should be enjoying the prime years of their lives, but two irresponsible gun owners did not store their guns safely.
Christopher was only a year old when I and my 1-year-old son, Zach, met him. At the age of 18, Christopher and other friends gathered, one afternoon, to hang out. One friend brought a gun he found at home. Christopher ended up dead.
One hot summer evening, Darius was with his cousins on his front porch. A neighboring youth in a passing car was having fun shooting a gun, with no intention of hurting anyone. As Darius took a moment to stretch and stand up, a bullet struck his head and killed him.
I’ve carried grief for Christopher and Darius for years, and my heart aches with their parents. The two youth who found those guns, should not have had access to them. A responsible gun owner would have locked the unloaded gun up in a safe and locked up the ammunition elsewhere.
When these tragedies happened in the late ’90s, I had not heard of the concept of “safe storage of guns.” Today, I’ve joined the movement to protect our youth from these tragic, needless deaths and injuries by taking effective actions to keep our youth safe from gun violence. The Be SMART program specifies practices to encouraging gun owners and non-gun owners alike to:
● Secure all guns in homes and vehicles
● Model responsible behavior around guns
● Ask about the presence of unsecured firearms in other homes your child visits
● Recognize the role of guns in suicide
● Tell your peers to Be SMART
Great resources are available to safely store guns at https://besmartforkids.org/secure-gun-storage.
The Oak Park Health Department provides resources for conversations with others to ensure children are staying safe. These include sample conversation starters that help parents and grandparents check to see that their children may stay safe: https://www.oak-park.us/safestorage.
Thank you, village of Oak Park trustees for promoting SMART week and focusing on the prevention of gun violence.
Lois Thiessen Love
Oak Park