“Gun Control and Controlling Your Guns”

 

    We continue the series “Gun Violence in Our Schools” with “Gun Control and Controlling Your Guns”

    Gun control advocates point to areas where guns can be easily acquired by those who cannot or will not use them responsibly. Unfortunately, this is a broad-brush statement that is easily agreed with on the surface. In order to stand up to scrutiny, individual factors from mental fitness to emotional maturity to education among others have to be addressed. In my experience, a primary risk factor ignored by gun rights advocates is the responsibility to safely own and use a firearm.    

    Premise: The key to controlling your firearms starts with safe storage and handling.

• How many times do children find an improperly stored firearm and fail to make the connection of what it can do? All they know is what they have seen, and at early ages cannot make the mental decision that guns are not toys unless they are specifically taught.
• How often are guns brought out at times when gun owners themselves lack the judgment to use them safely? I point specifically to situations when alcohol is involved. 
• How many guns are stolen from otherwise responsible gun owners, only to have them fall into the hands of criminals who use them to commit crime?  
• How many family members are injured or killed by gun owners who see them as power in a domestic violence incident or the escape from one?
  

    These are easily answered questions through statistics, but the answer is the same and quite clear: Too many.

    One trend I find particularly alarming is the support and passage of legislation that allows anyone who owns a gun to carry it without further training or permits. This may or may not be a contributing factor in school shootings, but it does reveal public attitude in such areas.

    Consider this. Police officers are trained in weapon retention. We are told "If you surrender control of your firearm, you are going to die." Civilian equivalency is this: “If you lose control of your firearm, you or someone else is going to die or be seriously injured.” The fact that the gun owner is largely responsible in this situation is sometimes lost but is none the less true.

    To further illustrate the importance of this point, these are some of the tenets of law enforcement weapons retention:

• Know the laws regarding safe storage and handling.
• Limit the number of places weapons are stored: Most officers have a single gun locker and store a service weapon "hot", that is, loaded and ready to fire. For civilians, this practice is not recommended, and in some areas, storage of ammunition in a separate location is required by law.
• Limit access to the storage area itself, not just the locker: I have two sons and they were never allowed in the room while the gun locker was open. Further, the combination safe/locker was behind a keyed locked door, and the key in yet a third location. My service weapon was not intended for home security, so additional steps preventing quick access were not an issue.
• When a firearm is in your possession, keep it in your possession: This includes the consistent use of holsters designed to hold the weapon securely, cases to hold each weapon securely, and only having one firearm to control at any one time.  Police officers and military personnel are specifically trained in the procedures and risks of carrying a second weapon. Civilians who lack this training should never do so.
• Practice safe handling on the range and in public: Do not draw your weapon for any reason unless you intend to fire it. A firearm is not an item for “Show and Tell” regardless of your age.
• Never display the weapon or place it on your body where it could be easily taken away. (I am firmly against open carry in public. A displayed weapon is an invitation to someone else to take it from you.
• When carrying a holstered weapon, adopt a stance that keeps your weapon side away from persons near you.
• Remember this above all. No one is going to take your gun away without the intention to use it on you or someone else.
• For civilians: Know the laws regarding safe storage and handling. Get the training even if it is not required.
• One final note, which is a part of police training but not weapons retention: Never display or utilize a firearm for the purpose of intimidation or retaliation.
  

    In my lecture series, I ask the students 1) Do you own a firearm?  If not, 2) Does anyone else in your home own one? Here is where the answers get interesting as most college age students don't own firearms, but members of their families do.

    “Yes” answers lead to Question 3) Are they accessible to you? Most students then describe lockers, locks, and separate storage for ammunition. Many of those students are the children of law enforcement and former military and occasionally are in the service themselves. Other students are related to or are hunters. Some, however, are not.

    As a law enforcement and School Resource Officer in Texas, I often encountered attitudes of aggression bordering on arrogance. My students often described during post assault and fighting interviews that they were taught to “Hit back.” Such escalation philosophy, often shared with them by fathers or older siblings, often results in turning a victim into a co-defendant. It was part of my duty as a mentor to students to dispel the idea of aggressive self-defense as strongly as possible. “Backing up is not backing down” I told them, echoing a training credo of the New Jersey State Police. I added my own personal advice to civilians “Self-defense ends when you strike instead of block.” These ideas were often seen by my students as showing cowardice. They do not.

    Now take a situation where a student is in a position where his status in the eyes of his peers is challenged. Unknown to his parents, he has possession of a firearm he had brought to school with no intention to use it, just to “be a man”. Now, the student is in a position where he feels threatened.  

            What do you think will happen next?

            One way to stop an angry and depressed student from becoming a school shooter statistic is to make sure that only trained individuals can gain access to firearms. Young adults who are able to purchase and own firearms, or those who have firearms in their homes, must be educated in their use, regardless of local requirements.
 

    **    This training can be held either during or after school, and sponsored by local organizations and clubs. This gives members of the general public an opportunity to get involved beyond social media. Older students can be taken to a firing range and given the opportunity for supervised practice with their own or other weapon.

    **    During such training, certain attitudes can reveal themselves regarding how safely those firearms will be used by their owners. Aggressive or arrogant attitudes must then be reported to medical and law enforcement authorities.

    There are countless scenarios where a weapon will fall into the wrong hands and tragedy results. Focused training for gun owners in safe handling and storage of firearms should be a mandatory condition for ownership. Under my consultancy “Emergency Response Training”, I am planning a course designed for in person and virtual presentation of these concepts.

    Next: “Good Guys with Guns are one step away from becoming bad guys, or dead guys.”