The TALK Project

The TALK Project puts life-saving information in the hands of over 500,000 Southern California elementary school families—printed materials available in Spanish, Armenian, Korean, and English that help parents and caregivers talk with their children about guns and, importantly, help parents and caregivers talk with their friends, neighbors, and family about guns and safe gun storage. Free gun locks are also distributed upon request.

Programs like this work! The evidence is clear and substantial: public education campaigns, such as those for seat belt use and anti-smoking, resulted in significant behavioral change. We believe that The Talk Project will produce the same life-saving results!

Check out our TALK Project website at TheTALKProject.org for more information, to order materials, and to request a speaker to come to your school, church, temple, or community group.

A new study by the American Academy of Pediatrics finds that providing free gun safety devices seems to be the most effective intervention in preventing child injuries and deaths due to unsecured gun in the home.

The authors called firearm injuries “a pediatric public health crisis.” Their findings are presented below.

Injuries and death

• 4,500 children under 21 died from firearm violence in 2015.
• 20,000 children present to EDs for firearm-related injuries annually.
• 90% of those ED visits are by children ages 12-19.
• Firearm injuries are more likely to be accidental for younger children and intentional among older children.
• Among adolescents ages 15-19, homicide by firearms is the second leading cause of death and suicide by firearms is the third leading cause.

Access

• Roughly 18% to 64% of homes have firearms, varying by location.
• 39% of parents erroneously believe their children do not know where their gun is stored, and 22% wrongly believe their child never handled their gun.
• In 2011, about 5% of high school students recently carried a gun.
• 65% of high school seniors had a gun in their household.

“Unfortunately, we found also that parents may have a false sense of security as to whether their children access their firearms,” Dr. Parikh said.

For more on the report

Women Against Gun Violence is pleased to release its own PSA on safe gun storage. Watch it in English (above), Spanish or Korean. And look for it on your local television station!

One of the arguments we often hear about keeping guns unloaded and safely stored is that an unloaded gun is useless. In this video, a professional firearm trainer demonstrates how you can get a gun out of your safe and load it within 6 seconds. Locking and safely storing your guns not only protects children from accidental shootings, but can also prevent teen suicides, school shootings (40% of teens involved in school shootings get guns from home) and theft of guns by criminals.