Too many guns are unsecured at home, with tragic results

I have spent the past 32 years of my life and career trying to keep people safe from violence in the workplace, in our K-12 schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, and in city and county government agencies that serve taxpayers, including libraries.

I have trained dozens of K-12 school districts and hundreds of school employees in school violence-prevention approaches.

If I could be granted just one wish that would instantly prevent school shootings, it would not be about anti-bullying campaigns (which range in success from a lot to not at all); more school resource officers (hard with such low staffing in law enforcement agencies); or better physical security at our schools (the locked “closed campus” model works best, especially as students enter and leave). No, those aren’t my primary concerns.

I would demand that every single parent who has a kid at a K-12 school, and who has a gun at home, stores it safely.   

Even a quick review of the more than 344 school shootings in 2023 — a number collected by the K-12 School Shootings Database — paints the terrible picture clearly: The majority of K-12 school shooters under 18 get the guns they use from their homes.

As a library security consultant and trainer since 2000, I’m reminded of the Clovis, N.M., library shooting on Aug. 28, 2017, that killed two library employees and wounded four others, including a 10-year-old boy. The 16-year-old shooter had originally intended to go to the high school. He instead went into the library first to use the bathroom, then came out and shot six people. He got the weapon from home, from his father’s unlocked gun safe. The ease with which he acquired the gun and ammunition was stunning. 

On Tuesday, the mother of a Michigan teen who killed four students at his high school in November 2021 was convicted of four involuntary manslaughter charges, the first time a parent has been convicted in a mass school shooting committed by their child. She was accused of not securing the gun and ammunition her son used.

Too many homes have unsecured handguns, rifles, and shotguns, sitting in closets, drawers, nightstands and boxes in garages. Too many parents mistakenly believe their kids know not to touch them. This is foolish, wishful thinking.

Think that can’t happen with a younger child? In January 2023, a 6-year-old boy who shot and wounded his teacher at a Virginia elementary school said in the aftermath, “I got my mom’s gun last night.”

So how can local libraries and even more so, school libraries, help stop this? By committing to a national campaign, in partnership with their nearby school districts, to put parents on notice that they have a legal, moral, and ethical duty to safely lock up every firearm in their homes. And equally important, to give parents easy, inexpensive, and readily available safe gun storage solutions.

Trigger locks and cable locks are cheap to buy and easy to distribute to parents. How about asking the local gun safe vendors in our communities to provide reduced-rate gun safes? You don’t need to buy a 600-pound gun safe when a lockable gun box will do. Can we ask gun shops and gun ranges to agree to provide as many free or inexpensive gun storage solutions as they can, as part of a gesture of goodwill? 

How about asking our local law enforcement agencies to partner with school and public libraries and talk about such programs and help libraries and districts distribute the equipment?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it so well: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” 

Kids are getting unsecured guns from their homes to use to shoot others and themselves. The solution is upstream but it’s not too far away to make it happen.