South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Pastor institutes ‘Gun Lock Safety Sunday’
Fort Lauderdale church takes on mission to spread the word about gun safety
While there is mostly political stalemate in Congress about issues surrounding gun regulation, there is a movement afoot for people to take matters into their own hands when it comes to improving gun safety. One of those solutions is the use of locks for personal weapons.
The United Church of Christ in Fort Lauderdale has taken on the mission of spreading the word about gun safety locks. They are starting with their own church, as well as adding in all 88 of the other UCC churches in Florida. It was also just announced that the national UCC organization has embraced the idea, which includes a total of 5,000 churches across the country. The idea is to not only bring awareness to the congregation but also to hand out free locks to their attendees.
“Gun Lock Safety Sunday” is happening June 26 at the church, 2501 NE 30th St., in Fort Lauderdale. The public is invited, along with members of the congregation. The UCC is also inviting other religions and places of worship to join them in bringing the gun safety lock conversation to their own places of worship on the same weekend.
Barbara Markley, co-chairperson of the Gun Safety Committee for the League of Women Voters efforts in Broward County and head of the Lock it Up! campaign, has been researching and spreading the word about gun safety efforts since 2018.
When Markley first started working on the issue in 2018, guns were the third leading cause of death for kids. Then, there were about 38,000 total gun deaths of children. Now there are 45,000 deaths, making gun deaths the leading cause of death above all other reasons as of 2020, according to a research letter published by The New England Journal of Medicine.
“The issue of gun locks is not about all gun owners, it’s about the 54% of them who don’t practice safe storage,” Markley said. “There are 5.4 million kids who live in homes with guns. If we could get people to lock up their guns right now, without any legislation, we could cut the 45,000 gun deaths a year in at least half. Two thirds of those deaths are from suicide. Ten kids a day are unintentionally shot. It’s now the leading cause of death for children and teens.”
Church leader heads effort
The Rev. Patrick Rogers is the senior
pastor at the UCC church in Fort Lauderdale. It was the pastor, along with his team at the UCC and nonprofit partners, who drummed up the idea of a particular Sunday in which the total focus of the service would be on gun safety, focusing on the use of locks.
Rogers points out that, in Florida alone, mass shootings alone have taken the lives of countless innocent victims at both public venues as well as schools in recent years. Those numbers don’t include individual acts of gun violence and suicides.
“In 2016, we had the Pulse nightclub shooting, where 49 young people were killed,” he said. “Then in 2018, we had 17 students killed by a shooter in Parkland. I went in person to both sites after those tragedies. I went there to support parents and kids.”
One particular experience that struck the pastor after the Parkland shooting stirred him into deep prayer to try and figure out what he could do to make a difference.
“After Parkland, I witnessed demonstrations by angry protesters,” he said. “One of the people held a sign that said, ‘Keep us in your prayers,’ but it had a line through the phrase. Underneath that, it said, ‘Do something’. That hit me, because it actually rang true to me. After I saw that, I spent time on my own talking with God, asking what action we could take, because there’s so much division
over the issue because of politics.”
Two years later, Rogers said that Markley came to the church to talk with him about a project.
“She handed me 10 gun locks and 10 pamphlets and explained the statistics about gun safety. I felt overwhelmed,” he said. “I didn’t do anything with them right away, but things changed after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“I actually had a dream one night, along with a vision, where God said, ‘I’m giving you the tools you need to help make a difference. You have everything you need now.’ ”
After the pastor’s vision, he said he realized that churches should be engaged in the efforts to promote gun safety, because of the moral power that they wield in their communities,
“The answer came to us to create a ‘Gun Lock Safety Sunday,’ ” Rogers said. “I knew that this message would have to come from the power of churches, which can unite us to make a true difference. If you put all of our churches together, there’s power there.”
But he said the UCC churches could make an even bigger impact together. So Rogers approached the Florida state churches to see what could be done on a larger scale.
“Florida has 88 UCC churches, and there are 5,000 across the country,” he said. “So I went to the UCC conference in Florida and
asked them if we could all have a ‘Gun Lock Safety Sunday’ with all of the churches in Florida participating, and they said absolutely.”
To do all of that, however, would require many more locks than the 10 that Markley had originally provided to the church.
“I realized I needed many more, so I asked Barbara if she could get us 1,000 gun locks for all of our churches,” he said. “She said she would try. Then she went to the Veterans Administration that provides the locks and she managed to get 1,000 of them.”
The pastor said a movement is needed that
involves action, rather than simply prayers.
“God’s been in this effort every step of the way,” he said. “I think this gun lock effort will turn into a national movement. The teens who held those signs that I saw at Parkland were correct. People need, and want, to do something. And this is something anyone can do outside of politics. In lieu of laws getting passed, this is something that can save lives.”
Media helping the message
Michael Kelley is partner, owner and executive producer at Equal Entertainment, which produces TV, film and documentaries nationwide with an emphasis on diversity and equal representation. Kelley is also a Pompano Beach resident and a passionate believer in gun safety.
“I got involved in the leadership of the Gun Safety Alliance, which is a voluntary national organization,” he said. “The group helps coordinate and amplify the messages of March for Our Lives and the Newtown Action Alliance, Everytown for Gun Safety and others. We’re in a media business alliance with all of them. We work together on common things like firearm safety legislation and similar issues.”
Kelley is a member of the UCC of Fort Lauderdale. He has been working with Rogers at the church on the idea of gun safety. Although he said he wants to see action taken on getting legislation passed in the state and the country, he said he realizes that there are other, more personal means of improving safety.
“Rev. Rogers and I got together about a year ago and talked about ideas of how we could work together and on gun safety,” he said. “Eventually, we discussed the possibility of a special Sunday event to talk about gun safety.”
Kelley said that the idea of “Gun Lock Safety Sunday” came up. They both agreed on the concept and then Rogers came up with the entire program.
“Even the act of simply safely storing guns would save eight children a day who are injured or killed by finding an unlocked gun,” Kelley said. “We can easily cut that in half, or maybe even zero in some cases. Domestic violence resulting in deaths would be curtailed a great deal. When it’s locked up, it allows for a few minutes of loving thoughts before taking action on impulse. Common sense says that if people have a chance to think about a situation before taking action, it’s less likely they will follow through.”
Gun safety locks reduce suicide
Gloria Lewis has been the suicide prevention coordinator at the Veterans Administration for 11 years. Part of her work is to help distribute gun locks and to educate veterans about the importance of safety.
“The VA identifies that suicide is the No. 1 priority we deal with in our veteran population,” she said. “We’re fully aware that in the general population, the use of guns is usually the No. 1 means by ending one’s life.”
She said children are also at risk.
“Since many veterans with families often possess guns, we also want to prevent children from getting access to guns,” Lewis said. “One of the big problems in society is that children and minors have been able to access guns fairly easily because there are few laws or awareness about safety.”
She said that, based on evidence, it’s been shown that if there is any kind of deterrence to stop an impulsive action, such as a gun lock, it can make people pause and think before using the weapon.
“Gun locks on a home weapon gives you a moment where you may feel you’re
frustrated, but it calms you down enough to maybe have a more thought process,” she said.
Lewis addressed fears from traditional gun owners who feel that their gun ownership rights will be infringed on by regulations.
“One of the things that I want to emphasize, whether it’s the VA or any organization, is that we’re not saying you can’t own a gun,” Lewis said. “Gun safety is not just for suicide prevention but for overall protection for people in their homes. All we’re asking is for people to be responsible gun owners to reduce the likelihood of something tragic.”
Lewis said that she has heard feedback from many veterans that gun locks have made a difference.
“They have said that they have had moments where they’ve held the gun in their hands, but that the safety lock gives them time to introspect and to stop them from following through with it,” she said.
Lewis said that she thinks what the UCC church is doing with “Gun Lock Safety Sunday” is creative and needed to help curb gun violence and deaths.
“We have to think outside the box to deal with gun violence,” she said. “It’s really the everyday people who are going to start to make the changes that are needed. People have to get their voices heard in Congress, as well as to get the word out about efforts like gun safety locks.”
Free cable gun locks can be requested at gunsafety@ lwvbroward.org.