September marks National Suicide Prevention Month and on this episode of Policy Outsider, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Executive Director Jaclyn Schildkraut speaks with Hannah Klein, an affiliate scholar with the Consortium and an assistant professor at Lewis University, about the role of safe firearm storage in suicide prevention. The conversation covers what safe storage really means, what we know about where people receive and want to receive safe storage education, and why safe storage is so important in reducing firearm suicides.
Guests
Transcript was generated using AI software and may contain errors.
Joel Tirado 00:04
Welcome to Policy Outsider presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Joel Tirado. September marks National Suicide Prevention Month and on today’s show, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Executive Director Jaclyn Schildkraut, speaks with Hannah Klein, an affiliate scholar with the consortium and an assistant professor at Lewis university about the role of safe firearm storage and suicide prevention. The conversation covers what safe storage really means, what we know about where people receive and want to receive safe storage education, and why safe storage is so important in reducing firearm suicides. That conversation is up next.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 01:03
Thank you so much for joining us today. Hannah, to start us off. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and why you began researching safe storage?
Hannah Klein 01:12
Sure. Thank you for having me so. I am Dr Hannah Klein. I started my career way before I got my PhD, working for the city of Philadelphia, first for the mayor’s office and then for our child welfare system, the Department of Human Services. And it was while I was there that we had a case where a sibling, two year old, I believe, shot their one year old sibling because they found a gun under the crib where the mom’s boyfriend had hit it, and that was sort of the first time I really entered this world of firearms as a prevention tool. But while I also worked for the city, I worked on our Youth Violence Prevention collaborative, which was funded by the Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. And as part of that work, I spent a lot of time talking to victims who were between the ages of 14 and 24 and I have a background in math and economics and public administration, I knew nothing about sort of criminal justice. I just knew a lot of data crunching abilities. And so I went to grad school, where I focused in criminal justice, got my PhD, and then ended up at Lewis University, where I work as an assistant professor. And it was while I was here that I really started digging more into safe storage, and it was actually because my first year here, I was pregnant, and I went through, like a lot of parents do, all of those training classes, and one of them was on safety, and we spent so long talking about IKEA dressers being attached to the wall and bookshelves and all of these kinds of things. And, you know, putting electrical sockets. And afterwards, my husband said, huh, we just sat through like, three hours of safety, and they didn’t talk about guns at all. And he had, he is not in any way, shape or form connected to the criminal justice world, but he had sat through all of my presentations for the last six years before that on safe storage and firearm safety and gang violence and aces and you name it. And he was like, they never talked about guns once. And that’s really where I started digging into my research on safe storage education. Why are we having these not having these conversations? Where should these conversations be happening? So it was a journey back to, you know, harkens back to my early 20s with that poor little two year old who is forever scarred because they killed their sibling because they found a gun. To myself, being a mom thinking, Oh, my God, my three year old could easily find a gun. What would she do with it?
Jaclyn Schildkraut 04:14
So many profound, different experiences you have that have all come together in this one research agenda. You know, it’s very interesting to hear your personal experiences. You know, both professionally and also, you know, as a mom, I want to kind of, you know, obviously, dive into the important research that you’re doing. But before we do, can you actually describe for us what safe storage means? How do we see safe storage being achieved?
Hannah Klein 04:41
So this is a really great question. Thank you so much for asking, because so often we think, Oh, if I just put this gun somewhere where a kid can’t reach it, it’s safe. And the truth of the matter is, kids get into everything. Just tell a mom who’s. Balls are now covered in, you know, lipstick or something, you know, oh, but my lipstick was so high up. How did this kid get to it? So what safe storage of a firearm means is the best practices are that you store the gun itself with a lock on it so that can be through the chamber or with a guard over the trigger a trigger lock, that gun that is itself locked, hopefully needs to be in a locked box of some kind that your kids or anyone other than you cannot get to so making sure that either you know the code, or if it’s a fingerprint safe, that you are the fingerprint on there, and then your ammo needs to be stored separately from that. So if, for some reason, someone were to get to the gun, and even then, it’d be hard to unlock it, they wouldn’t be able to get that ammo. And so that gun needs to be stored without ammo in it. Obviously, it’s locked and inaccessible, and that is, if it’s in your home, do not leave a firearm in your car. We see so many reports come in of someone breaking into a car, especially if they have a big bumper sticker that says, like, here’s my AR whatever. Come and get it, or you can take my gun out of my cold dead hands. Those cars are way more likely to be broken into because they are not stored safely in that car. It is easy access, and it’s also very dangerous if a gun is in a car and something were to happen to that car. So that is what it means to have safe firearm storage, and it is all guns. So if you think, Oh, well, my rifle is fine, you know, to hang it on the wall. I love hunting. I want to, you know, put it under the deer head. Um, that’s not safe storage. Rifles can hurt others, so all guns need to be locked up.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 07:10
I want to ask a little bit about the important research that you’re doing. You recently completed a study examining parental preferences for safe storage education. Why do you think that this is an important area of inquiry?
Hannah Klein 07:23
Thank you for that question. It’s we really wanted to know where parents are receiving safe storage education if they are. The answer to that is they aren’t. But also, where would they like to receive it, and where would they feel comfortable receiving it? Because we know that people learn from people they trust, and that they know for longer and that they have strong relationships with and so we wanted to know who are those people, who are those individuals or those locations where parents would feel comfortable? The last thing we want to do is have someone that they don’t feel comfortable talking about it, spouting out this knowledge, and then it doesn’t become really like true to them. They wouldn’t think that it’s a really vital conversation. If some guy on the corner is shouting, and we’ve all seen those individuals shouting things on the corner. We all think they’re crazy. Their message isn’t real, all of those kind of things. So we wanted to know, with the limited resources available to educate families and to educate everyone, where can we best use that funding, where can we best target these messages that’ll make the biggest impact, where a parent will hear, Oh, this is where, this is how I need to store a gun if I have one. But also, where will they learn if my friend, if my kid is going over to a friend’s house, or if my, you know, friend is hosting a party, how do I have a conversation with them to know if their firearms are safely stored. And so we wanted to know, rather than just Oh, education is super important, we know education is super important, we wanted to figure out, where would that education be the most impactful so that we get our money’s worth when we’re doing this prevention work?
Jaclyn Schildkraut 09:21
Interestingly, you know, as you’re alluding to, you consider these, all these different credible messengers and how they can deliver that education. What did you guys find relative to like a healthcare setting?
Hannah Klein 09:33
So we this summer had a whole bunch of focus groups, but our original study was actually focused on health care specifically, which is really interesting, and sort of where all of this spouted off, because I was curious why I hadn’t learned about it during my, you know, prenatal safety classes, which seems like a really valid place to learn. And so we asked parents last year. Did you receive this education? If so, what did it look like? And then we asked all of these parents, would you feel comfortable? Did you want this education? Do you think healthcare providers know enough? And we overwhelmingly heard we feel comfortable with this. Even firearm owning families said we feel comfortable with this. We would actually really like for a healthcare worker to have this conversation with us and provide us with this education, but we don’t think they know enough, and so that’s where some of our work comes in. Of like, how do we educate? But when we were talking this through after we have all of these great findings, a big question was, well, what does that education look like? What does that modality look like? So we spent this summer, the last several months, conducting focus groups with all of these parents throughout Illinois, asking them, do you feel comfortable? Would you like education in these places? And then, what does that look like? And so we asked about healthcare settings, which, again, we hear a lot of yes, we would really feel comfortable with this, especially with pediatricians. We would love if our kids pediatrician had this conversation with us first, when the kid is little to, you know, just remind us and educate us. But as the kid is growing up and going to more birthday parties and going over to friends houses and sleepovers, how do we have those conversations with other parents? How what does that look like? How do we get that education from our pediatrician? And then as that kid gets older and older, and we know that September is Suicide Prevention Month, you know, that becomes a real issue for middle schoolers and high schoolers. So reminding parents in those healthcare settings, where pediatricians are still and often are the person who’s been with your kid from the day they were, you know, three or four days old to 18 years old. So generally, pediatricians came across as a huge, credible messenger. That was a really big one that, across the board, everyone said yes in some way, shape or form. And then when we asked, you know, what does that education look like in a healthcare setting? Sometimes it was oh, we would prefer just a brochure or Oh, actually, if there was just a sign on the wall in the waiting room or in the room that we could just read while we’re waiting for 45 minutes for our doctor to come in, that would be really helpful. And then some said, Actually, it’d be nice if they gave me the brochure, but also talked me through it a little bit. But in general, it was very much we trust healthcare workers. There were some other locations that were a little less all on board, but healthcare providers were definitely one that there was a lot of support for, especially from pediatricians.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 12:57
And I’m just curious you know, because thinking about how you describe sort of your first experience, right? When you were pregnant, you were going through safety classes with your husband. Do you think that there’s, like, this preference for pediatricians? Because, like, when you’re going through, like the pre safety right, these are kids who can’t necessarily get high up to get the firearm, or, you know, you’re worried about them dealing with things that, like ground level, but as they get older and become more mobile, you know, and more curious about exploring. Do you think that’s why pediatricians are are viewed so favorably?
Hannah Klein 13:27
I think pediatricians, just in general, are viewed favorably because they they know the kid. And if you’ve ever been a parent in a room with a pediatrician, they are so knowledgeable about so many different things, and they are with you through years and years and years. And so you’re starting off, you know, every few weeks, and then every couple months, and then gradually it gets to go to, you know, year by year. But when your kid is sick, they’re who you go to. And I am a first time parent. I trust nothing, you know. I don’t trust myself in any way, shape or form. I’m looking at my cat thinking, How did I keep this cat alive for all of these years now, I have to keep a baby human alive like what? And so they’re a place that you turn to for knowledge and support in the scariest moments of Can I keep this human alive? What does this cry mean? They’re just such a trusted source, and they’re generally think having that doctor, you know, MD, or, oh, you know, OD, attach, or DL, I guess, attached, just it gives a little bit of credence. I mean, I can make stuff up, and I have a PhD, and my students would believe it, because I have, you know, a doctorate, and I know my medical doctor, my kids pediatrician, way more, you know, actually knowledgeable, not just making stuff up. And I trust her, you know, thoroughly. And so I think that’s why they’re just this credible messenger who has gone through this. Again, it gets back to the question of, do they know enough? And so highlighting that they would be a credible messenger doesn’t mean that they have all the education that they need around safe storage, but that’s where we can start putting some, you know, funding towards doing that education, making it part of their, you know, continuing education credits and stuff. I
Jaclyn Schildkraut 15:21
think we should actually take this moment to say that you don’t actually just make stuff up for your students. You are incredibly knowledgeable and educating them. Great.
Hannah Klein 15:29
Thank you. Yes, most of the time,
Jaclyn Schildkraut 15:34
you know, but it’s interesting, because we also know that schools and workplaces are so prevalent, right? Schools, you know, are dealing with parents every single day for the children that are coming through their doors and workplaces, you know, are the places we go to be able to take care of our kids. So did you guys find anything related to those two types of locations?
Hannah Klein 15:51
Schools were fascinating. I went into this thinking parents were going to hate schools that they were going to say, Absolutely not, do not let you know, the schools teach my kids about safe storage guns in school, bad, you know, all of this stuff. Overwhelmingly, parents were like, I this would be a great place for school, you know, to learn about this, both for the parents like, Hey, can this be at, you know, Parent University or at Welcome back night curriculum nights, if there was just someone tabling at these events, that would be really helpful. But also so many parents were that we talked to, and we had parents ranging from infants to parents of high schoolers, and some were parents of kids still in schools, but also graduates. And they were like, if my kid had come home at, you know, 10 years old and said, Hey, Mom, do we have a gun? Did you know this is the way to store it? I would have listened, and the kid would have, you know, learned something, and also one of the big pieces of safe storage, especially if we’re teaching kids, is talking to the kid themselves, to say, if you see a gun, don’t touch it, you know, make sure that you go and find a grown up, you know, all of those kinds of important things. So putting that in a school and including that in the curriculum would be great. And so many of the parents we talked to are, you know, between the ages of, like, upper 20s to some in their 50s. And all of them remember dare. And so many said, what if this was just part of a dare curriculum? Or what if a school resource officer taught our kids about this. So getting it from both the parents learning about it at a parent teacher conference or a Parent University, or a text message from the school of just like safety awareness, you know, Friday or something, here’s a tip, and hearing it from their kid as well. The one thing I will say, schools should not put this in the weekly emails or the daily emails that parents get home. Every parent admitted they delete those immediately. They will look and see, oh, it’s spirit week again. Okay. Like, great close that. So it needs to be something that is direct messaging to them, not something that I have to scroll through all of these things and not just on the school’s website. It needs to be pushed towards them. But you also talk about workplaces, and workplaces are another one where everyone admitted they delete their emails immediately. I even when we were doing one with some of my colleagues as a practice for my student who did a lot of this research, all of them, like, looked at each other, and I was like, Don’t worry, guys, HR is not in the room. You can say that you all delete those emails, and we do. And so workplaces were an interesting one when we talked about it, because they were like, don’t put in an email. But if you did lunch and learns, if you brought in an organization like be smart, or Moms Demand, or any number of organizations, including the NRA, which does some education on safe storage. If you brought them in and had them bring pizza, we would listen. Or if there was the opportunity that going to a safe storage class would get us a decrease on our deductible, or something like that, that would also be great. It was much more of a conversation about incentivizing it, and the carrot, not the stick, of getting people in the door. So having your HR department send out an email, not going to work, but bringing in someone who’s knows what they’re talking about, and having. That conversation was something that people were much more receptive to. I’m
Jaclyn Schildkraut 20:05
wondering, you know, as I’m listening to you kind of share these different insights, it also seems like this is an opportunity to talk about responsible gun ownership, right, and what it means to be a safe and responsible gun owner. And certainly, we know that there are many firearms in circulation. Did you guys ask at all about, you know, kind of that interplay between safe storage and responsibility as an owner? Yeah, so
Hannah Klein 20:26
that’s really interesting that you bring this up because one of our focus groups this summer, we were a little nervous at first for who walked through the door, but we ended up having probably the best conversation ever. And it was members of the NRA, the Illinois Rifle Association and a few other gun advocacy groups, came to the focus group, and they very much started with the is this going to be an agenda of take away our guns? And it turned into a no, of course not. This is a safe storage conversation. If you have a gun, which we know all of you do, all of them were concealed, carried at that meeting. So I was like, this meeting really can’t go left, but I know you have this weapon. Let’s talk about safe storage like, how do we educate people? And they were the biggest supporters, I would say, of safe storage education. They wanted to hear about other ideas of where it could be, because they, one of the individuals who had come to this focus group actually was a trainer for handguns, and he talked all about how the first two days of this training course that he runs, which is NRA sponsored, and but Illinois approved, and all of these things, he doesn’t let anyone touch those guns until they are thoroughly trained on Safety. And so they are actually huge advocates for safe storage. We this is one of those issues that isn’t left and right blue and red, it is everyone wants and cares about safe storage. It’s how do we educate those individuals that’s going to be the most impactful. But very much. We had a lot of those conversations about how, if you actually care about the gun conversation, the hashtag two ways the you know, fights over the politics of it, everyone comes together on this issue safe storage saves lives, and all of that is actually something that all sides come together on so we were nervous for a little bit that we were going to have some fights over some of these conversations. And we ended up having probably the most impactful conversations when their work on owners in the room who were very active on the no, we need safe storage. This is what it means to be a firearm owner, and recognizing that many of the guns that criminals get their hands on are guns that are taken from individuals who haven’t stored them properly, kept them in the back of their car, just sort of rattling around, keep them, you know, on their front porch or on a table in their front room, that someone can break through that window really quickly, grab that gun and be out of there and use that gun in other ways. So there’s actually a lot of advocacy on all sides, um, for that proper the gun ownership involves gun safety and encouraging that and so as much as I am not a member of the NRA, they actually have some really quality educational pieces, including for kids, a program called Eddie eagle that teaches kids about safe storage and what to do if they if a kid sees a firearm. So being a gun owner, a responsible gun owner, very much comes with the safe storage conversation. And so wording it in that way is really helpful and impactful.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 24:16
It was interesting, you know, you mentioned, obviously, that there’s different groups that you know people want to hear from or view as credible messengers. And so it seemed to be obviously, overwhelmingly favorable with your pediatricians and other healthcare professionals, with workplaces and schools, it’s sort of like, well, it depends on the delivery and the incentivization. But are there any groups where your participants were just like, No, we don’t see these people as credible messengers. It doesn’t matter what they say, we’re not buying into this
Hannah Klein 24:43
churches. It was so interesting. I thought for sure that churches would be a place that would share this information, and people would, you know, buy in and we overwhelmingly heard no. Do not have my pastor stand on the pulpit and tell us about firearm safety. That would not be a place where we want to hear at all. So that one was a really fascinating one that we heard, and when we dug a little bit deeper, they said, you know, if the church is hosting a community event, a back to school night, you know, backpack drive, or a trunk or treat around Halloween, they can definitely invite an organization like a be smart or Mom’s Demand to come and educate at those events. But inside the church, generally, no keep the guns out of the church conversation. So that one was really interesting. Another one we got some mixed findings on were first responders. So we specifically asked first responders, not directly law enforcement. We said, fire, EMT, law enforcement officers. That was a really interesting, mixed one, and it very much depended on who we were talking to. Race and Gender played a big role in that. So we largely heard, you know, oh, firefighters and EMTs. We really trust them, and it matters for their safety, because if a gun is in a home that’s on fire, that gun can go off if it’s not stored correctly, and if there’s ammo in that gun, that becomes a potential like round. So they were definitely a group that generally was very supported. Law enforcement was a different story depending on race and ethnicity that we heard. Some were very much, yeah, like, if they were at a community event, or if I got an email from the Insert, you know, city names, police department, you know, with a safety bulletin, I would read that. And then others, we had one moment where a law enforcement officer was part of the focus group he was participating, and another participant looked directly at him across the table and said, I don’t trust you guys. And that was a really interesting moment of okay, like race matters, class matters, ethnicity matters. And so one thing someone brought up was, actually, this might be a way to build community trust. Is if you had these community events where law enforcement was there and they were talking about safe firearm storage instead of, you know, saying, guns are bad, you know, we need to be safe, get these guns off the streets, etc, if they were there and actually saying, Hey, this is how you properly store it. This is what how it matters. This is how it can protect you and your kids. And they have that lived experience of seeing the other side of things when a firearm is not secured and a kid finds it, or a teenager finds it and uses it for self harm or domestic violence. And so if they were part of a panel discussion or at a community event where they could share those real life experiences, then they came across as a little bit more credible. But just law enforcement going out there and being like, lock up your guns, that sort of changed the feeling around that one. So those are the two big ones where we sort of heard no, not a fan. Keep this out of my church and law enforcement needs to do this in a really community based, trauma informed way.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 28:35
You know, it’s interesting, because I think you know the the explanation you gave for why there’s a distrust in police to have this conversation. I think it’s very clear, right? We know that police community relations are very strained right now across the country, not just in Illinois, but I’m curious, did anybody give a reason why they weren’t, you know, willing or interested in hearing from it, from the church, which is usually a very trusted institution in a community.
Hannah Klein 29:00
So for the church, we asked this question, and it was sort of the politicization of the conversation was, you know, I don’t want my church to have a say in guns one way or another. And some churches at the larger higher ups have put out some messaging around how they feel about firearms, as you know, being good or bad, but again, it becomes this very good or bad. We often see in religion this good or bad discussion, whereas firearm safety is neither it’s it’s good to have safe storage, but it’s hard to have those conversations that are so black and white and so they just didn’t feel comfortable with it. They didn’t want to hear their pastor, who is telling them about heaven and hell and all of these other things, saying, Oh yeah, and also, lock up your guns. It just didn’t seem like the right fit. It or comfortable. And so again, they were one of those groups that people said, but if they were hosting a community event, which they are known to do, then we would love to have an organization that’s a credible organization share this information out. And they didn’t really want their pastor to know if they had a gun or if their pastor had a gun. That was a conversation no one wanted to have as well. So that’s super
Jaclyn Schildkraut 30:24
interesting. It seems like everybody’s really open to the where it’s just the who, right in terms of who’s delivering this. But I’m curious, because we haven’t actually talked about this right now, we know who the credible messengers are in this conversation, but what kind of education are people looking for? What kind of information do they want to get out of this?
Hannah Klein 30:41
So it was really interesting, because it depended a lot on how many kids a parent had or how old those kids were. So parents of younger kids sort of wanted a brochure and someone to talk through them. You know, really quickly, as fast as you can get this information to me, because I have a two year old who’s running across the parking lot, or is, you know, demanding to go to the park. How do I get this, you know, out as fast as possible, whereas others, especially kids who were, you know, more school aged, a little older, the parents were much more like, I would actually like to go to an event and hear something, a presentation or a panel about, you know, maybe we have a whole bunch of people, a law enforcement officer or a firefighter and a criminologist and a social worker and a doctor all on one panel. Or some said, you know, we all had some kind of traumatic thing that we went to some assembly in like, middle school or high school about, you know, drunk driving or drugs. And some of them are like, Why don’t we do this in, like, a dark way of like, having our kids get the bejesus scared out of them by, you know, having an assembly where a mom talks about their kid who found an unsecured gun and unalive to themselves or someone else, and have them talk about it. So it really depended on the age, but a big consensus was, more education the better. More avenues to get this education out there. We’d love it if you can give us a 15 second PSA, that’s going to terrify us. Wisconsin currently has one that’s really good and really scary for parents that can help but really you need to educate on the proper safety. It’s not just guns are bad, it’s that education. So being really prescriptive on locking it up, storing the ammo, separate all of those kind of pieces. How quickly can you have that conversation? Can you know, vary in the detail, and so the more educational sources really, the better. But it needs to be brochures. It can also be a podcast or a lecture, or any number of things. Parents, when parents didn’t know what they didn’t know was a big thing. A lot of parents would leave our conversations going, I didn’t know any of this. Why has no one ever talked about this with me? This is so important. Everyone should know about this. And my team sat there going, we know, like, Duh. But the point is, it’s really important information. The more avenues we can get it out, the better, including Snoop Dogg, like, that was a big one. So we heard from people when we sort of opened the floor to where else can people learn about this? And someone would always say, like, oh, be great if there was, like, a celebrity who, like, took this up as their mantle. And we would say, oh, like, What celebrity would you be interested in? And the number of times Snoop Dogg is brought up, he’s amazing. So that education needs to come from everywhere except for maybe pastors. But Snoop Dogg is the most credible of all the messengers.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 34:16
I mean, that might be why he was a torch bearer in the Olympics, you know, who knows? Yeah.
Hannah Klein 34:22
I mean, he’s incredible around mental health, so maybe we just need to make this a new issue, quite
Jaclyn Schildkraut 34:28
possibly. You know, it’s interesting that you’re talking about, you know, parents in the age of children and how much time that they get. And I’m just wondering this kind of popped up when you were talking about that. But was there any interest by the parents in your study about having that safe storage education in connection with their child, like both could attend a session together, and they could work together for that safety goal.
Hannah Klein 34:50
No parent brought that up directly, though they often talked about being in the same room like in the pediatrician’s office. Yes, they would say, you know, oh, my kid could sit there and hear it as well. And I think for a lot of the school related things, it would be great if a kid sat in that same room with that parent, if at that community event, there were a way to tell the parent, you know, here is a gun lock. This is how you would use it. And then at the same time that kid is standing there and is also learning and gets to play with it. And a lot of gun locks are really fun colors. The ones we give out are red. And so making an engaging thing for kids as well, because it is really a parent needs to know to lock up the gun and keep it away from their kid. But kid needs to also be able to recognize, oh, there is an unsecured firearm right here. This is the proper thing to do when there is an unsecured firearm. Let me go find a grown up, and if that grown up doesn’t know safe storage, but that kid knows that kid can talk that parent through it, or that grown up through it. So I think there’s opportunities to have that parent and that kid in the same room, in that same space, having those conversations.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 36:09
So you mentioned earlier, and I want to remind our audience that September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and so I do want to ask, how do you see safe storage education playing into our efforts across the nation to reduce firearm related suicides.
Hannah Klein 36:25
So unfortunately, suicide with a gun is so deadly, it is so good at its job, we know that guns, suicide, death with a gun is much more, I hate to use the word successful, but goes to completion at a higher rate than any other form of a tool used. And so making sure that parents of any age keep a firearm away from their kid and don’t give their kid access, puts that one extra barrier in place, because so often it’s a very short term problem that leads to a forever result of no longer being with us. And so if you have a 13 year old, 14 year old, 15 year old kid who can’t get that easy access to that firearm in their home, or a grandparent’s home, or an aunt or an uncle or a neighbor, if everyone around you is all doing safe storage, that kid has more time for their brain to realize you know What? This is a really bad day. I want to, you know, end it right now, but then it’s going to have this time to say, Oh, actually, you know what, I’m glad that I’m still here. And we hear from so many survivors that they are glad they survived. And so for firearms being so. Again, I hate using this word, but successful to completion is so much harder to you know, get that tomorrow if you use a gun. So if everyone knows about safe storage, not just the parents of that kid, but also the neighbors, the friends, the family, the extended family, if everyone is storing their firearm safely, that kid isn’t able to go somewhere else to get access to that firearm. And so that education needs to not just be for that single home, that single parent who has that kid who might be at risk, it is a prevention tool for that kid, if everyone in their life knows, because I will say, I do not have a gun in my home at all. But I married a Michigander whose family loves to hunt and fish, and so my daughter could, you know, easily go to grandma and grandpa’s house or to their her aunt and uncle’s house, who, you know, the venison is delicious. I’m never going to tell him to, you know, give up his hunting rifle or any of his other guns, but I need to make sure that she, they know, to lock it up so that my daughter is never going to have this chance of like, Ooh, I can’t get one at home, but I can easily go to my aunt and uncle’s house to get one. So putting that extra barrier in to give that kid more time to really think about it and get the interventions necessary, call 988 have someone else call 988 on their behalf. Talk to a counselor, trusted adult, someone like that. Just giving that much more time is really important, and can save so many lives that that kid says, You know what, I’m glad I didn’t do this and that barrier. To success is really important.
Jaclyn Schildkraut 40:03
I can’t think of a better place to leave our listeners, Hannah, thank you so much for sharing your very important research with us and all of the insights that you brought to our conversation today.
Hannah Klein 40:14
Thank you so much for having me.
Joel Tirado 40:20
Thanks again to regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Executive Director Jacqueline shieldcraut and Hannah Klein, an affiliate scholar with the consortium and an assistant professor at Lewis University for that important conversation on firearm safe storage. If you liked this episode, please rate subscribe and share it will help others find the podcast and help us deliver the latest in Public Policy Research. All of our episodes are available for free wherever you stream your podcasts and transcripts are available on our website. I’m Joel tirado until next time. Policy Outsider is presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. The Institute conducts cutting edge nonpartisan public policy research and analysis to inform lasting solutions to the challenges facing New York state and the nation. Learn more at rockinst.org or by following RockefellerInst. That’s i n s t on social media. Have a question, comment, or idea? Email us at communications@rock.suny.edu.
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