These moms want you to talk to your kids about gun safety

Stephanie Hull remembers finding her father’s gun in a closet when she was about 10.

She’d been searching for Christmas presents when she came across the silver handgun in an old leather bag.

“It was just so jarring and I had no idea what to do,” she said. 

Hull was old enough to know guns could be dangerous, and not in a frame of mind where she was tempted to show it to friends, play with it, carry it to school for protection or take her own life.

But across the U.S., thousands of kids each year aren’t so lucky. Seven children were shot and killed per day in the U.S. in 2022, making firearms the leading cause of death among American children and teens, according to a report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. That includes 64 children under 10 who were shot and killed accidentally.

Now a teacher in Sublimity, a mother of two and gun owner herself, Hull wants to make gun safety a routine conversation among parents and their children.

Since 2018, she’s been the Salem leader for BeSmart, a national effort to promote secure gun storage and safety around children. She was motivated after realizing that she and her husband hadn’t been taking basic firearm safety steps like locking up guns in their home.

Keizer parent Jane Titchenal joined her last spring.

The pair said the BeSmart program offers a way to talk about guns that gets past the often heated and partisan disagreements over gun policy. 

The program focuses on community outreach and education, teaching people how to store guns safely, giving them free tools to do so, and encouraging parents to talk to their children about guns. 

Doing so, they said, can prevent many types of gun deaths. Research shows that having easy access to firearms significantly increases the risk of suicide, because most suicide attempts are impulsive decisions and few methods of suicide are as effective as guns.

Locking up guns helps keep teenagers safe, as well as young children who may not know firearms are dangerous.

Titchenal has a teenage son and said she wanted to get involved in BeSmart because of the community conversations around gun violence and teens in Salem. Shootings involving young people as both victims and perpetrators have increased in recent years, and Titchenal said making sure teenagers can’t easily access guns is part of the solution.

“Most people are really receptive. You’re coming at it as a parent that’s concerned about safety,” said Titchenal. 

She said they demonstrate how quickly a gun can be retrieved from a small bedside safe that uses fingerprints, dispelling the idea that locking up a gun means it can’t be accessed quickly in an emergency.

The two teach regular free classes at Salem Health’s Community Health Education Center, with the next one on March 6.

They also table at school and community events, handing out free gun locks they get from the Salem Police Department.

Hull said she wants to make firearm safety a normal, nonjudgmental part of the conversations parents routinely have when kids have playdates.

When her daughter goes to a friend’s home, Hull covers usual topics — food allergies, pets — but also asks if there are any unsecured firearms in the home. When other kids come to her home, she volunteers that her family owns guns, but that they’re locked away from kids.

The approach works, she said, because it’s not demonizing gun ownership. The focus is on how firearms are stored and ensuring they’re not accessible to children.

“I don’t want my daughter to be one of their statistics,” she said.

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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