Letters - December 2023

Lock up guns
Recently, two metro area incidents changed our children’s lives, one tragically, and one near tragedy. On Oct. 4, a 14-year-old girl, Monica Joy Holley, was killed as a bystander in a shooting in St. Paul. In that same week, information was reported on an incident that happened on Aug. 16 in Inver Grove Heights, where a seven-year-old boy was injured by his three-year-old brother who got his hands on an unlocked and loaded gun while in their parent’s car. We shake our heads and point fingers at perpetrators and policies. We think, “If only….”
I know we can do more than point fingers and shrug our shoulders to reduce this epidemic of our children dying from gun violence. We have done it before.
In the 1980s, organizations like MAAD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) brought outrage to the epidemic of children dying in car accidents. Laws were passed. Penalties increased. Ways of thinking changed. NIH statistics reported that alcohol-impaired driving fatalities involving youths declined by 84% from 1982-2018, an amazing testament to change.
I believe we can change our feelings of hopelessness toward gun violence. Last May, St. Paul brought attention to gun safety and passed a secure storage ordinance that requires gun owners to use locking devices or lock boxes to store guns, in homes and vehicles. City leaders pointed to FBI statistics reporting a disturbing number of gun thefts from cars, totaling more than 50% of all stolen guns. Locking up guns discourages theft and their possible use in crimes and shootings. Locking up guns keeps them from the hands of children playing. The ordinance may not have prevented Monica’s death or the seven-year-old’s injury, but it can educate us and rouse us to act, knowing that the lives of our children are in our hands.
Julie Retka
Midway