The countdown clock has started. You have under one year to tell the world how you’re going to prevent gun-related school and workplace violence.
Last week saw celebrities, politicians and even major sports teams dress in orange to support National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This is the first in what organizers hope will be an annual event.
That means next June, building owners, school boards and health care facilities will all have to publicly account for what they are doing to make their facilities safer from gun violence.
The Soteria Group was created to minimize the risks of workplace violence and school violence in all its forms. As a recent article pointed out: “Bans on assault rifles are being urged yet rifles of any kind (assault or not) are involved in only three percent of homicides, according to FBI crime stats. Bare hands are used at twice the rate of rifles, and knives at more than four times the rate.”
The Soteria Group is working to prevent all means of violence but guns have a higher per-incident body count, a greater chance for accidental killing as well as collateral damage from stray bullets. Raw hands don’t have those problems.
Not every celebrity is in favor of gun control. Recently, actor Vince Vaughn suggested that the best way to prevent gun violence in schools is to have more guns in schools “Take mass shootings,” he wrote. “They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns…. In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there.”
Texas just made it legal to carry concealed guns on college campuses.
While the notion that “the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun” feels intuitively right, we believe in a more proactive, systematic approach to prevent gun violence.
More guns on campus allows more kids (and adults) access to guns. A dangerous gun is an unsupervised gun in a child’s hand. It only takes an instant for the unthinkable to happen, like when two year old reached into his mom’s purse at Walmart pulled out her gun and killed her.
These incidents are all too common. According to Rolling Stone, “In just the last week, a three-year old boy in South Carolina shot himself, a Virginia toddler shot and killed himself with one of his parents’ guns, and a four-year-old shot and killed a man at a South Dakota gun range. The week before, a three-year-old boy in Utah shot his four-year-old brother, and another three-year-old boy, this time in Florida, shot his one-year-old sister in the face, in front of their preschool. Day after day, week after week, the list goes on. By a back of the envelope calculation, the death toll starts to look like a Sandy Hook every few weeks.”
For our children’s sake, here are some specific steps campuses (both college and K-12) can take to prevent school violence:
- Gun Safety Training – Educate everyone on gun presence and safe usage.
- Awareness campaigns (eg. Messaging, billboards, etc.).
- Ways to prevent unsupervised access when the gun is at the workplace.
- Proper storage is best way to prevent accidents. Most guns in the hands of criminals were bought by normal citizens who failed to secure them properly. According to the U.S. Department of Justice – 230,000 guns were stolen in burglaries and property crimes. That’s compared to 25,000 stolen from dealers. Between 2005-2010 there were 1.4 million guns stolen.
- K-12 school are especially vulnerable. Since Newtown in 2013, 120 kids have died by gunfire. Between 1999-2010 364,483 people killed by gun violence. Out of that 4,818 children under age of 14 killed. 791 died from unintentional gunfire. On average of 72 child gun deaths each year – most due to guns being unsecured. Most school shootings were committed with stolen guns.
- You can read more gun violence statistics here.
Just as most businesses publicize all their good environmental works on Earth Day, starting next year, you may need to publicize the steps you are taking to prevent school, healthcare and workplace violence. We at The Soteria Group can help.
We provide you with a free violence vulnerability assessment of your workplace. We can inspect your site to offer suggestions on how to improve worker and client safety and security. We can train your staff on ways to reduce the risk of workplace violence. Depending on your industry and location, we might be able to find safety funding opportunities for you. Let us help.