The Connection

By Kerry Donley, Former Mayor, City of Alexandria; Allen Lomax, Chair, Partnership for a Healthier Alexandria; Richard Merritt, Member, Alexandria Public Health Advisory Commission; Paul A. Friedman, Founder/Executive Director, Safer Country

In commenting on the aborted Special Session on Gun Control, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said: “That was a laughable attempt [by the Republican majority] to disguise their own lack of a backbone.” He was also correct in observing that “gun violence is a public health epidemic that goes beyond mass shootings.”

Mass shootings, whether they occur in shopping malls, school of office buildings, or concerts naturally grab the headlines and are clearly the focus of our collective fears about gun violence, but it’s important to know they are not the source of the majority of deaths or injuries by firearms — at least to our children — that occur in the U.S.

Gunshots are the second leading cause of injury-related deaths in children, next only to car accidents. A recent study, based on 2012-2014 data, shows that an average of 5,800 children in the U.S. receive treatment in hospital ERS each year for a gun-related injury, and almost 1,300 children die every year from gunfire. Estimates are that about 21% of the injuries and deaths are unintentional; of the remaining 79% intentional shootings, the vast majority were the result of suicides, homicides or domestic violence disputes, and not the consequence of mass shootings.

A small group of Alexandria citizens have been working for some time on measures to keep our children and our community safe from both intentional and unintentional gun violence. We have suggested legislative amendments to the General Assembly, mostly that would grant greater local authority to curb gun violence, but we have focused mostly on solutions we believe can be initiated at the local level without enabling legislation from Richmond.

Chief among these ideas is to create a climate in the City of Alexandria where gun safety and proper storage of firearms are truly community values.

National data indicate that about 7 percent of all children in the U.S. live in a house in which at least one gun is stored in an unsafe manner. Furthermore, child suicide rates by firearm rose 60% between 2007-2014.

Recent research published in JAMA Pediatrics found that “even a modest intervention that motivates households to safely store guns could reduce youth firearm deaths by 6 percent to 32 percent.”

We have suggested the City Council and the School Board adopt a joint resolution to that effect and then empower city and school staff to implement a number of measures to promote gun safety and storage throughout the community. Among the measures we are recommending are:

• developing a public relations campaign (including our own PSA) to educate the community and especially gun owners on the importance of proper storage of firearms in the home;
• requesting all parents or guardians with children in the school system to pledge to prevent child access to guns at all times in their homes;
• distributing free gun locks along with educational materials on proper gun storage protocols to all interested gun owners; and,
• encouraging health providers at Neighborhood Health and the Alexandria Health Department to inquire of patients whether there is a gun in the home and if so, if it is locked and stored properly;

Some might argue that there is no evidence that firearms are being misused or are not properly secured in the homes (or the workplaces) in the city, and thus there is no need for such a local effort. We argue, however, that a proactive gun safety campaign that emphasizes education and prevention will be embraced as a community value and its effects will be nothing but positive.

Hindsight is always 20-20 but when dealing with the potential of lethal violence, be it in a home, the workplace, a shopping mall, or a school yard, none of us would want to find ourselves in a position of asking ourselves, “if we had only ….?”

It has been said: “Presumption is the opposite of prevention.” We cannot afford to presume that different leadership will emerge in the 2020 General Assembly — one dedicated to an agenda of reducing gun violence in the Commonwealth. To do so is nothing short of gambling with the lives of our children. We have the capacity and the vision for making some small but meaningful steps toward gun safety in our community. So, in the words of a CNN nighttime host, “Let’s get after it.”