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Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, I want to welcome you to a special edition.
Speaker 3: Now here's what I want to say before I introduce
Speaker 3: you to my very special guest today. You know, one
Speaker 3: of the things you all have heard me talk about
Speaker 3: over and over and over again is how I grew
Speaker 3: up what I was exposed to, but very few of
Speaker 3: you ever heard me talk about the fact that I
Speaker 3: also grew up in a military family. I also grew
Speaker 3: up in a police family. Yeah, I have on one
Speaker 3: side of the family chief of Police, the other side
Speaker 3: of the family major sergeant. So what is the thing
Speaker 3: that happens when you're around people in that arena. The
Speaker 3: other part of what I grew up with is understanding
Speaker 3: how to live off the land. And I was very
Speaker 3: fortunate to be part of studying the land with some
Speaker 3: incredible Indigenous people. But one of the things that we
Speaker 3: don't talk about is what was that like for us
Speaker 3: as kids, And actually have never talked about it until now.
Speaker 3: Joining me today is David Hayes Cox wrote a new book.
Speaker 3: It is called This is a Gun. This book is
Speaker 3: so needed, it is so timely, And what I want
Speaker 3: to say about it is, if you're from my family,
Speaker 3: you got the schooling on this is a gun early on.
Speaker 3: But yet here we are and we're just not talking
Speaker 3: about it. And yet, David, half of the families is
Speaker 3: it in the United States owned guns? Is that a
Speaker 3: correct deal?
Speaker 4: Right there?
Speaker 5: It's between forty and fifty of American owned firearms. That's correct.
Speaker 3: So thank you for joining me here today. This is
Speaker 3: a safety guide for families with children, and it is
Speaker 3: so needed. You know, I was very fortunate because my
Speaker 3: family was so open about their military experience or police experience.
Speaker 3: A lot of us wanted to become police people or whatever.
Speaker 3: That is. Right, So those conversations happened early, Right, we
Speaker 3: got exposure early. But what's going on with families that
Speaker 3: were so afraid to have these conversations with our children.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I
Speaker 5: really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great to have here.
Speaker 5: You're absolutely right. What's not happening is families, both families
Speaker 5: that own firearms and families that do not own firearms,
Speaker 5: are not having the conversation with their children, their younger
Speaker 5: children about firearms, just about the fact that they exist
Speaker 5: in this world, especially in our country here in the
Speaker 5: United States. They exist, and they're dangerous items if they're
Speaker 5: not used properly, just like any other tool in our house,
Speaker 5: any other thing that could be dangerous. We're avoiding this conversation,
Speaker 5: and it's both sides. Firearms owners and non firearms owners
Speaker 5: are avoiding this conversation. Now, like you said, you grew
Speaker 5: up in a family that didn't avoid this conversation, and
Speaker 5: there certainly are plenty of firearms owning families that are
Speaker 5: doing the right thing. Having that conversation. For sure, they
Speaker 5: exist for lots of them. But unfortunately, there is still
Speaker 5: a lot of accidental deaths happening in this country, and
Speaker 5: we can prevent them. All we have to do is
Speaker 5: educate our children.
Speaker 3: I love that we're talking about this. You know, my
Speaker 3: family immigrated here and my grandfather lived off the land
Speaker 3: from Brazil, so you know, coming to the United States
Speaker 3: not understanding the rules here. Of course you bring what
Speaker 3: you know. And you know, all of us were exposed
Speaker 3: to this because you walk into our house you see
Speaker 3: a gun over the mantle. I mean, those are some
Speaker 3: of the things that I was exposed to, but it
Speaker 3: isn't so obvious in a lot of families. And I
Speaker 3: want to talk to you about the second thing you said.
Speaker 3: You know, you talked about having conversation and families that
Speaker 3: don't own guns. Let's talk about the importance of that,
Speaker 3: and then we'll talk about how you illustrated the book.
Speaker 3: Why is that important to have that conversation, regardless whether.
Speaker 5: You've got a gun or not, because we're not in
Speaker 5: control of the environments that we are not in control of,
Speaker 5: and the numbers here in America are between four hundred
Speaker 5: and five hundred million guns are in civilian hands. Now,
Speaker 5: I'm not here to judge that number. I'm just here
Speaker 5: to tell you that that's what the number is. And
Speaker 5: that means that, along with what we mentioned before, which
Speaker 5: is that between forty and fifty two percent of us
Speaker 5: households own firearms, that your child, whether you have a
Speaker 5: house with a gun in it or not, if your
Speaker 5: child is old enough to play at a friend's house
Speaker 5: and play unsupervised, there is about a fifty to fifty
Speaker 5: chance that they're playing in a house that might own
Speaker 5: a firearm. And I'm not saying that just because a
Speaker 5: house owns a firearm that it's going to be a
Speaker 5: dangerous situation. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm
Speaker 5: saying is that we can't be in control of environments
Speaker 5: that we're not in control of, and we need to
Speaker 5: prepare our children for any possible situations. Yeah, I say
Speaker 5: this all the time. With this, which is, we don't
Speaker 5: send our children out into the world without preparing them
Speaker 5: for that world. We teach them to look both ways
Speaker 5: before they cross the street. We teach them about stranger danger,
Speaker 5: We teach them all of these things about being on
Speaker 5: their own out in the world. But for some reason,
Speaker 5: well I know the reason, we all know the reason.
Speaker 5: Because guns are such a contentious political topic, we avoid
Speaker 5: this conversation completely and we think that if we avoid it,
Speaker 5: nothing's going to happen, and it's just not going to
Speaker 5: affect us. And unfortunately, the numbers are saying that's not
Speaker 5: the case.
Speaker 4: No, it's not, and that's going to be I mean,
Speaker 4: we're not talking about something that is based on the
Speaker 4: law diminishing returns right now, because the amount of homes
Speaker 4: and families and peoples that are now going out acquiring
Speaker 4: guns and getting some people are actually getting turned. You know. Look,
Speaker 4: I come from this family where my brother in law
Speaker 4: was a master archer, and I remember walking in his
Speaker 4: room one day and he.
Speaker 3: Just got back. First of all, I wasn't supposed to
Speaker 3: be in his bedroom, right, I mean, you shouldn't even
Speaker 3: be there. But he hadn't put away his beautiful archery equipment.
Speaker 3: And here's the kid going over to the equipment. I
Speaker 3: got to tell you, my brother in law jumped out
Speaker 3: of that bathroom like it was nobody's business. And what
Speaker 3: it led to is sitting us down and having a
Speaker 3: conversation about what it is, what it does, and what
Speaker 3: to be aware of because like anything, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: he was an Olympic kind of guy. Like anything, there
Speaker 3: are moments in a family or something like that might happen,
Speaker 3: do you know what I mean? I love the way
Speaker 3: you start the book, and I want to start there.
Speaker 3: You asked the question, and I want to ask the
Speaker 3: audience this question, and thank you for the illustrations. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much, you say in the opening. And this
Speaker 3: is not just for kids. I want to go this
Speaker 3: out there for the parents too. What do you do
Speaker 3: if you see a gun and you give us three choices?
Speaker 3: Do not touch the gun, run away from it, tell
Speaker 3: an adult about the gun. Now, why am I bringing
Speaker 3: that up? That is one of the fundamental things where
Speaker 3: we should start to educate our kids about. And we
Speaker 3: don't know what to do to answer that question. Generally speaking,
Speaker 3: we don't do it.
Speaker 5: That's right, and it seems so straightforward when we say
Speaker 5: it out loud, But we need to explain this to
Speaker 5: our kids because they have developing minds and they can't
Speaker 5: come to that simple conclusion on their own. They just
Speaker 5: can't do it all the time, or if ever, if
Speaker 5: they're not given the instruction first a child has an
Speaker 5: idea in their head about guns that is built upon
Speaker 5: just movies, television shows, video games, their friends playing on
Speaker 5: the playground, nerf guns, squirt guns. They have this amalgam
Speaker 5: built up in their head about what a real gun is.
Speaker 5: And mostly all of that is positive because heroes use them,
Speaker 5: They have fun and games playing with toy guns. They
Speaker 5: don't have a sense of danger about guns unless we
Speaker 5: as parents explain to them that a real gun is dangerous,
Speaker 5: a real gun requires training, a real gun should never
Speaker 5: be touched by an untrained hand, and real gun shouldn't
Speaker 5: be touched by a young child. And if we don't
Speaker 5: explain this to them and they come across one, they're
Speaker 5: going to go towards it, not away from it, and
Speaker 5: it won't be their fault at all.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A lot of the situations that happened, including one
Speaker 3: from my childhood, right. I told you we were well
Speaker 3: schooled even as very young kids. And I remember going
Speaker 3: over to Joseph's house one day and down his basement
Speaker 3: and there he had his dad's gun out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: And I like at the beginning of the book where
Speaker 3: you give us different guns, right, you give us different
Speaker 3: gun types because we were also schooled. But when I
Speaker 3: was growing up, I didn't have to worry. We didn't
Speaker 3: have to worry about automatic or semi automatic machine type guns, right,
Speaker 3: But we did recognize some of them, like a snubnose
Speaker 3: or a smaller gun or something like that. And I
Speaker 3: remember going down there and Joseph had this gun, and
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, put the gun away. This is
Speaker 3: put the put it down. I'm not going to come
Speaker 3: down your basement. Put the gun down. Put it down.
Speaker 3: Because kids, it's hard to convert kids from I got
Speaker 3: the I got the holster, the toy holster, and now
Speaker 3: I got a real gun, and convert them to the
Speaker 3: wisdom and the knowledge that those are not the same.
Speaker 3: You don't wave the gun around. Isn't that One of
Speaker 3: the greatest challenge we have is the lack of knowledge
Speaker 3: or even shall I say, ignorance of young people because
Speaker 3: they haven't been taught.
Speaker 5: That's right. Without proper training, they're not going to know
Speaker 5: how to be safe around a firearm. And you are
Speaker 5: so lucky that you had at least some training from
Speaker 5: your parents, you know, to be wary of a real firearm.
Speaker 5: And to say that I would even I would even
Speaker 5: add these days, I would say, if you come down
Speaker 5: and your friend is holding a gun, don't even try
Speaker 5: to tell them to put it down. Turn around, get
Speaker 5: out of them, word, get out, Find an adult to
Speaker 5: tell them to put it down. Don't put that on yourself,
Speaker 5: don't put that on your child to instruct another child
Speaker 5: what to do about a firearm. Your job is to
Speaker 5: stay alive. Your job is to get out of that room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and thank you for saying that, because that is
Speaker 3: the best advice. You know. As a kid, you don't
Speaker 3: know what to do. But we have to make our
Speaker 3: children educated. We really do have to drive the point home.
Speaker 3: If you're walking into a room and somebody's waving around
Speaker 3: a gun, you need to get out. I mean, don't
Speaker 3: you think that there are things we could talk about
Speaker 3: today that are some of the misconceptions.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Number one, All guns are dangerous, end a story, even
Speaker 3: the gun I held up from World War Two before
Speaker 3: the show. All guns are dangerous, and if you think
Speaker 3: about them any other way, we're going to be in trouble.
Speaker 5: That's right. I mean, we have to explain all guns
Speaker 5: are dangerous in the same way that all knives are dangerous.
Speaker 5: All chainsaws are dangerous. All bodies of water that you
Speaker 5: don't know how to swim in are dangerous. This is
Speaker 5: what everybody needs to understand. And as long as we
Speaker 5: can educate our children how to identify a firearm and
Speaker 5: understand that it's a dangerous that they shouldn't touch, then
Speaker 5: they can remain safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, look, you have been knowledgeable teaching for I
Speaker 3: think it's over twenty years. What do you think is
Speaker 3: let's start with the parents. What do you think The
Speaker 3: number one, and I'm gonna call it a mistake, is
Speaker 3: that they make newly gun owner old gun order. I
Speaker 3: don't care what kind of gunoder, but what's at the
Speaker 3: top of your list that people should be like? Please, parents,
Speaker 3: you got to think better than this.
Speaker 5: Well. Top of the list for new gun owners is
Speaker 5: that they have to budget for storage. Period. New gun owners,
Speaker 5: you can't have storage as a side. I'll get to
Speaker 5: it eventually. Yeah, you have a budget for a firearm,
Speaker 5: and you're a parent, especially a parent, you need to
Speaker 5: make sure that that budget includes a way to lock
Speaker 5: that gun up period. You cannot take a new gun
Speaker 5: into your house with kids in your house and not
Speaker 5: have a way to securely store that so that your
Speaker 5: children cannot access it. And that doesn't mean putting it
Speaker 5: on the top shelf, because the statistics show that you know.
Speaker 5: That might work for the toddler years, But as soon
Speaker 5: as your kids have a sense of direction, a sense
Speaker 5: of where each room is, an ability to walk through
Speaker 5: each room on their own without you chasing after them,
Speaker 5: they eventually find out where the firearms are at a
Speaker 5: much higher rate than you could possibly imagine. And as
Speaker 5: a matter of fact, most children know where your firearms are,
Speaker 5: even if they haven't told you that they know. So
Speaker 5: it's so crucial that you have storage, a storage device
Speaker 5: or a lock for your firearm. That's number one.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about this. Putting the gun in your dress
Speaker 3: or drawer because you think your children are not allowed
Speaker 3: to come in your bedroom. That's a big no. Gun
Speaker 3: in the dresser drawer unlocked, and you think you're burying
Speaker 3: it in your underwear, That isn't it. Putting your rifle
Speaker 3: under the bed, Are you kidding me? But these are
Speaker 3: things that we do, and what you're doing is educating
Speaker 3: us not to do this. One question I have about
Speaker 3: safety and I want to get to it. This this
Speaker 3: idea that I just bought a case for my gun,
Speaker 3: beautiful heavy duty black case. Everything's in the case, right,
Speaker 3: I'm protecting it, not really though, as long as that's
Speaker 3: if it's got a lock. But also you need to
Speaker 3: not have it in a case where it's obvious that
Speaker 3: your children see it. You know, kids, I don't care
Speaker 3: what they are. They're curious and as they get older,
Speaker 3: whatever happens in their mind, whatever movie they're watching, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever whatever influence they are, under peer group pressure, they're
Speaker 3: going to find that thing. They're going to take it
Speaker 3: outside and they're going to probably try to put a
Speaker 3: sledgehammer to it to open it. And so we have
Speaker 3: to be a little bit more careful, don't we.
Speaker 5: Well, I agree with with caution always, but I will
Speaker 5: say this, The goal is to make sure that firearms
Speaker 5: are not a forbidden fruit.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: So what that means is that you need to normalize
Speaker 5: that there are fire If you are a firearms owner,
Speaker 5: you need to normalize that. You need to educate your kids.
Speaker 5: And I think it's completely okay to let your children
Speaker 5: know that, yes, you are a firearms owner, when you're
Speaker 5: ready to make that when you're ready to make that statement,
Speaker 5: when you're ready to tell them about that. I think
Speaker 5: it's completely okay that they know this, and a lot
Speaker 5: of firearms owners, you know, if their child tells them,
Speaker 5: their younger child, child five, six, seven years old, hey
Speaker 5: can I see your gun? That's a completely okay question
Speaker 5: to ask.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The best thing that you can do is not go
Speaker 5: so no, never, I'll never let you see that that
Speaker 5: you should never ever touch it, don't you know, don't
Speaker 5: don't ever talk about it. That's that's not what we
Speaker 5: should do. What we should do is make sure that
Speaker 5: one it's unloaded, and two that you you don't have
Speaker 5: to let them hold it. You don't have to let
Speaker 5: them touch it, but just for them to see it,
Speaker 5: and you show them how you're holding it safely. You
Speaker 5: need to know the four Universal Laws of gun safety,
Speaker 5: which will show you how to properly hold a firearm
Speaker 5: even if it's unloaded in front of your child. Make
Speaker 5: sure that you you do this so that the gun
Speaker 5: doesn't become this forbidden fruit that they're driven out of
Speaker 5: curiosity towards. And that way, if you do have a
Speaker 5: case with a lock on it, it won't become something
Speaker 5: so extreme that they might take it outside and put
Speaker 5: a sledgehammer to it because it's just normalized in your
Speaker 5: home and so or they're just not curious any longer.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it has a gun, it's locked up.
Speaker 3: I love that you're talking about that, because if it's
Speaker 3: not normalized the way you behave around your peers and kids,
Speaker 3: and you cover this in your book. I want to
Speaker 3: take a minute and I just want to ask you,
Speaker 3: first of all, how do people get the book and
Speaker 3: how do they find out more about that? What is
Speaker 3: your website?
Speaker 5: The website is this is agun dot org and you
Speaker 5: can buy the book on Amazon. You can buy it
Speaker 5: at Barnesandoble dot com. Any online retailer that sells books
Speaker 5: carries this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to what you said because
Speaker 3: it's very very important. It's actually the psychology that's behind this.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I want to get
Speaker 3: back to that you said is we have to normalize
Speaker 3: it so that a behavior doesn't seem extreme. And what
Speaker 3: am I talking about it? It's you and I are
Speaker 3: adults talking about this, but that's not always a scenario.
Speaker 3: It's your twelve or thirteen year old with your neighbor's
Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen year old or having a conversation. You know,
Speaker 3: one wants to see a gun, the other one doesn't.
Speaker 3: And if you're not prepared for scenarios like that, then
Speaker 3: you're going to get tripped up.
Speaker 5: That's right, and that's why you have to instill this
Speaker 5: confidence in your child. When you give them adequate information,
Speaker 5: When you can give them permission to talk confidently about
Speaker 5: firearm safety, they can insulate themselves from peer pressure. If
Speaker 5: you don't give them permission to say no to a friend,
Speaker 5: they will say no to the friend. So that's that
Speaker 5: comes from the parents confidence. We take our confidence and
Speaker 5: we lend it to our children and we say it's
Speaker 5: okay to say no to your friend. If your friend
Speaker 5: is like, hey, my dad's got a gun. You want
Speaker 5: to see it? You say no, thank you, I'm good,
Speaker 5: right you. You have permission to say no to your
Speaker 5: friend from us. We're telling you that that's okay and
Speaker 5: that you're not going to get in any trouble for
Speaker 5: saying no to your friend. Your friend is going to
Speaker 5: be okay with you saying no. It's it's going to
Speaker 5: be fine if you tell them no. And the same
Speaker 5: thing goes with your own helm where they go, hey,
Speaker 5: does your gun? Does your dad own a firearm? Right?
Speaker 5: Can I see it? Can you show it to me?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Give them permission to say no, that's not how it works.
Speaker 5: So we have to give them that permission.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I know this is a short interview,
Speaker 3: but I want to get to one of the latter
Speaker 3: parts in the book, and it is the promise section. Yes, now,
Speaker 3: I got to ask you. I love that you put
Speaker 3: that there. What was behind your thinking of including my
Speaker 3: gun safety promise in the book? I just love the
Speaker 3: way that is because it does something very very cool.
Speaker 3: First of all, it engages the youth and not scolds them.
Speaker 3: It is that thing where you're talking about normalized but
Speaker 3: you're also teaching them about accountability, about the fact that
Speaker 3: guns do kill.
Speaker 5: That's right. It's a section where the child basically can
Speaker 5: read out all of the steps for firearms safety and
Speaker 5: then they sign their name on there, and that helps
Speaker 5: them take ownership of this. It's a pledge to themselves,
Speaker 5: and it's a pledge to their parents in the community
Speaker 5: that they're going to be responsible when it comes to
Speaker 5: firearms and firearms safety. And it's just another way. It's
Speaker 5: another tool in the toolbox for getting our children engaged
Speaker 5: and making sure that these rules stick in their head.
Speaker 5: That's the most important part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go over some of the common guns that
Speaker 3: we find in households. You also talk about this in
Speaker 3: the book, and many of the people here may or
Speaker 3: may not know, but you also need to educate your
Speaker 3: family on I think on gun type. I really think
Speaker 3: it's important for if you're going to be around guns,
Speaker 3: you have to understand what you're around, right. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're going to work with your dad on your car, right,
Speaker 3: you have to understand what you're using to work on
Speaker 3: that car. Same thing in anything you do in life,
Speaker 3: you have to understand the tools you're using. You have
Speaker 3: to understand why you're using them. You have to be
Speaker 3: able to see. You know, please don't go near that
Speaker 3: table saw if you don't know how to use it. Folks, Right,
Speaker 3: that's right, But not every table saw is the same.
Speaker 3: So can we talk about this because you included this
Speaker 3: in a book and I was curious about your inclusion
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 4: In the book.
Speaker 5: Well, it's actually quite simple and it might be the
Speaker 5: most important part of the entire book. It's why I
Speaker 5: put a life size replica of a real firearm on
Speaker 5: the cover.
Speaker 3: I saw that.
Speaker 5: You know, there's two things, two main things that children
Speaker 5: need out of this book to be safe around guns.
Speaker 5: Which is the one is the steps that we discussed.
Speaker 5: Don't touch, run away, find an adult if they ever
Speaker 5: see a gun. But in order to follow those steps,
Speaker 5: they need to know what a real gun actually looks like.
Speaker 5: Because you could teach those three steps till you're blue
Speaker 5: in the face. But if you aren't sure that your
Speaker 5: child knows a real gun when they see it, they
Speaker 5: don't know when to fall those steps. So what I
Speaker 5: found was is that children can follow those steps, but
Speaker 5: because they've never seen a real gun before in their life,
Speaker 5: they don't know what a real gun size looks like.
Speaker 5: They don't know what a real gun actually looks like.
Speaker 5: It's something that we take for granted. We think, oh,
Speaker 5: everybody knows what a gun looks like because they've seen
Speaker 5: them on TV or they've seen them in video games.
Speaker 5: But those are caricatures of real guns. A lot of
Speaker 5: times films TV shows use extra large guns because they
Speaker 5: show up on screen better than small guns. So when
Speaker 5: children look at actual like actual guns that are the
Speaker 5: most popular guns in America for concealment carry for protective purposes.
Speaker 5: They look at these and they think they might be
Speaker 5: toys because of how small they are. So it's so important.
Speaker 5: And that's why I put a real life size one
Speaker 5: of the smallest guns and most popular guns in America
Speaker 5: on the cover of this book, and a gun library
Speaker 5: in the back of life size images of the ten
Speaker 5: most popular handguns, so that children can act actually see
Speaker 5: the real size and what they really look like, so
Speaker 5: that they can start building a database in their head. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so if they see one in real life, they have
Speaker 5: a much better chance of saying, hey, that's not a toy,
Speaker 5: that's a real gun. I'm not going to touch that.
Speaker 5: I'm going to get out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also it's capability, I mean, part of what
Speaker 3: we were trained about, especially since you know, on my
Speaker 3: grandfather's side of the family, they lived off the land.
Speaker 3: You know, he was a farmer in Brazil. I mean,
Speaker 3: come on now, right, I mean it's not like you
Speaker 3: wake up and you got a gazillion dollars. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't even think he had a grocery store to
Speaker 3: go to. So everything was off the land. And you
Speaker 3: know when he came over here, he brought everything with
Speaker 3: him that he had, and so for us as kids,
Speaker 3: you know, we weren't afraid of it. But in the
Speaker 3: world we live in now, you know, you get shows
Speaker 3: that literally named the gun, and then it becomes sexy
Speaker 3: and then you know what I'm saying, it's like, what,
Speaker 3: that's the most common thing you hear on TV right
Speaker 3: on whatever the show is, that's out there whatever. I
Speaker 3: know what, I don't know, whatever the show is. It's
Speaker 3: a nine millimeter okay, And you're right, these guns look
Speaker 3: gigantic on TV, and that is kind of you know,
Speaker 3: when you actually see a gun. And thank you for
Speaker 3: putting the full size pictures in here, because you did
Speaker 3: do that right.
Speaker 5: They're all life size.
Speaker 3: They're all life size picture. I was a little surprised,
Speaker 3: I will tell you. I don't know why I was surprised.
Speaker 3: I'm not an officionado, but the Glock nineteen one.
Speaker 5: Of the right regular handguns in America.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: The other misconception is that guns cost a lot of money,
Speaker 3: and they don't. In the context of things, they don't
Speaker 3: cost a lot of money, so they are easily available.
Speaker 3: And I'm talking officially buying a gun. I'm not talking
Speaker 3: about going on the show and buying a gun. But
Speaker 3: I want to ask, in a few minutes left, if
Speaker 3: you add three of your top things you want to
Speaker 3: leave us with on this what would that be? What
Speaker 3: do you find Usually are the hardest parts of the
Speaker 3: conversation that parents run into.
Speaker 5: Well, the hardest thing for parents to do really is
Speaker 5: just to get comfortable with talking about guns. It's a
Speaker 5: really hard, a hard thing to do. A lot of
Speaker 5: parents are so scared that they won't even utter the word.
Speaker 5: And we need to break free of that, and we
Speaker 5: need to realize that we do for our children's sake.
Speaker 5: We need to talk about guns, and we need to
Speaker 5: do it calmly, and we need to do it with confidence.
Speaker 5: And then after that it's just what I've already described,
Speaker 5: which is that we need to make sure our child
Speaker 5: knows how to identify a real gun, and they need
Speaker 5: to understand the three steps of don't touch, run away,
Speaker 5: find an adult. And we need to be able to
Speaker 5: give them as many situations as possible where they might
Speaker 5: find a gun, so that they can build up a
Speaker 5: database in their head of guns and scenarios where they
Speaker 5: might find one, and give them that confidence to say
Speaker 5: I'm not going to go near it. I'm going to
Speaker 5: tell my friend no, I'm going to run away. I'm
Speaker 5: going to find an adult. I'm going to be safe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, thank you for everything today.
Speaker 3: I have one last question. How are we doing with
Speaker 3: taking this conversation into schools.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of work to
Speaker 5: be done. There are definitely some schools out there that
Speaker 5: are doing some basic firearms training in the elementary school area.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot more that needs to be done.
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, schools, public schools across the
Speaker 5: country need to include firearms awareness in just the basic
Speaker 5: educational training that they have for their elementary schools. So
Speaker 5: we need to do a lot more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Jave, thank you so much for today's
Speaker 3: last question. What's your personal message? What would you like
Speaker 3: to leave us with and again give us the website.
Speaker 5: Yes, so it's this is a gun dot org. It's
Speaker 5: it's where you'll find all of the information for parents
Speaker 5: and for firearms owners and non owners how to keep
Speaker 5: your children safe. And my message is just that education
Speaker 5: is what empowers us, you know, and the research consistently
Speaker 5: shows that age appropriate education improves children's safety outcomes and
Speaker 5: this is this is the case in all domains, including firearms,
Speaker 5: and we need to realize that that safety safety education
Speaker 5: improves all outcomes in every other domain, so it will
Speaker 5: also improve outcomes in firearms. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for everything you're doing on this.
Speaker 3: Education is really the key to this. You know, I
Speaker 3: grew up in a tough neighborhood. You know, I grew
Speaker 3: up in the projects, and you know, when you grow
Speaker 3: up in an environment like that, you're more exposed than
Speaker 3: most people are. But now we live in a world
Speaker 3: where you just reference forty two percent that we know of,
Speaker 3: and they're probably more we don't, So demystifying it and
Speaker 3: educating all family members are essential right now. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for the work you're doing, and thank you
Speaker 3: for the book.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me on you BET.
Speaker 3: For those of you out there, the book is called
Speaker 3: this is a Gun, and I want you to know
Speaker 3: that this is educational. And by the way, if you
Speaker 3: don't know how to have the conversation, get a hold
Speaker 3: of Dave. Go to the website. Right, this is agun
Speaker 3: dot org. I believe that's right, Dave, ask some questions, right,
Speaker 3: this is what you can do ask some questions so
Speaker 3: that you can have the conversation right. But the thing
Speaker 3: really that Dave pointed out is the conversation is a
Speaker 3: normalized one. It's not fire and brimstone. It's something that
Speaker 3: gets a child or a family to understand this is
Speaker 3: going to kill somebody. And number two, you have the
Speaker 3: ability to do things that you probably don't think you
Speaker 3: have the ability to do. Thank you Dave so much.
Speaker 3: We'll see y'all next time.
Speaker 5: Thanks again.