This paper proposes a community collaboration strategy to reduce youth firearm injuries and suicides caused by improperly secured firearms. Drawing on empirical research, the paper demonstrates that child access prevention (CAP) laws are associated with significant reductions in firearm-related accidents, non-lethal injuries, and teen suicides. The paper identifies key stakeholders — including parents, youth, public health departments, law enforcement, primary care providers, gun shop owners, and civic organizations — and outlines a Freirian communication approach consisting of listening, dialogue, and action. The analysis argues that community-driven coalitions, rather than top-down expert-led initiatives, offer the most effective path to improving firearm storage practices and advancing CAP legislation.
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of public health literature and community organizing theory. Rather than treating these as separate domains, the author integrates epidemiological findings on CAP law effectiveness with McLean's (1997) Freirian community mobilization framework, showing how evidence-based goals can be pursued through participatory, community-driven communication methods.
The paper opens with narrative case examples to establish emotional stakes, then presents a literature-supported justification for CAP laws. It identifies stakeholders and argues for a community-driven (rather than top-down) coalition model. The communications section applies a three-phase Freirian framework (listening, dialogue, action) to the specific stakeholder landscape. A brief conclusion ties rising gun ownership trends back to the urgency of the proposed intervention.
In 2012, 9-year-old Maximos Herbert discovered a loaded and unlocked gun underneath his father's bed, and a few minutes later an accidental gunshot wound to the head ended his life (Brindley, 2013). According to the prosecutor who charged Mr. Herbert with negligent storage of firearms, parents involved in such incidents are so traumatized by the death or injury of their child that they are rarely prosecuted or serve time. Yet parents continue to store loaded and unlocked guns in their homes. To make matters worse, the National Rifle Association (NRA) continues to promote gun ownership among children aged 5 to 12, with similarly tragic results (DeFilippis & Hughes, 2014). In Kentucky, 2-year-old Caroline Starks was fatally shot by her 5-year-old brother minutes after he received a .22 caliber rifle for his birthday. The mother, believing the rifle was unloaded, had left the room for only a moment when the tragedy occurred.
In an attempt to stem the tide of injuries and deaths resulting from loaded and unlocked guns in the hands of children, several states have passed child access prevention (CAP) laws (Brindley, 2013). Despite mounting evidence that these laws are effective (Webster, Vernick, Zeoli, & Manganello, 2004; Hepburn, Azrael, Miller, & Hemenway, 2006; DeSimone, Markowitz, & Xu, 2013), some states continue to allow parents to store unlocked and loaded firearms within easy reach of children. Towards the goal of reducing the prevalence of youth injuries and deaths due to improperly secured firearms, this essay proposes a community collaboration to address this issue, identifies the relevant stakeholders, and discusses a communication strategy in detail.
Webster and colleagues (2004) examined the relationship between gun laws and suicide rates among teens. The gun laws of interest were age restrictions for the purchase and possession of handguns and CAP laws, while the outcome of interest was firearm suicides. Of the two types of laws, only CAP laws were associated with a significant reduction in firearm suicides for the age group 14 to 17 (rate ratio, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.83–0.96). This finding is particularly salient given that 62% of all suicides among individuals aged 14 to 20 are committed using a firearm; between 1976 and 2001, almost 40,000 adolescents ended their lives in this manner.
When rates of firearm-related deaths were evaluated across states with and without CAP laws, only Florida and California experienced significant reductions for the age group 0 to 14 (Hepburn et al., 2006). The rates of accidental firearm deaths among this age group were also influenced by the severity of the penalty assessed against the responsible parent or caregiver; states that impose felony charges experienced the greatest reductions in firearm-related deaths.
Firearm-related injuries among youth are far more common than deaths, with close to 6,000 reported for 2009 alone (DeSimone, Markowitz, & Xu, 2013). An examination of hospital discharge data for the period from 1988 to 2003 revealed that CAP laws were associated with a 26% reduction in self-inflicted, non-lethal gun injuries among youth. The economic benefit realized by preventing these injuries was estimated to be in the millions of dollars due to reductions in direct and indirect healthcare costs. Clearly, there is a significant individual and societal benefit associated with CAP laws.
Communicating the necessity of locking guns in homes with children has been problematic (Coyne-Beasley, Schoenbach, & Johnson, 2001). Parent education in the primary care setting seems to have little effect, but a program that provided confidential firearm safety counseling, free gun locks, and unlimited access to health care professionals for counseling had a significant impact (p = .02) on storage practices among gun owners with children. This program involved a community coalition consisting of firearm safety experts, law enforcement personnel, and health professionals. Locking unloaded guns separately from ammunition and in a location inaccessible to children is considered best practice by the Children's Safety Network (2013).
The possible participants in a community collaboration to reduce youth gun accidents were alluded to in the preceding section. Gun safety experts, law enforcement professionals, and health professionals would constitute the professional arm of the collaboration. However, community collaborations have been defined as a collaborative effort between professionals and grassroots leaders, with the aim of providing a place at the table for those most impacted by the health or safety issue (Clark et al., 2006). Securely storing firearms to protect children from harm has the greatest impact on parents, so the success of any collaboration depends on the ability to engage a sizeable proportion of parents in the change process.
Even parents who diligently secure their firearms away from their children have a stake in the outcome, because their child could gain access to an unlocked and loaded weapon in a friend's home or be exposed to a loaded weapon should a fellow classmate bring a parent's gun to school. In addition to parents, youth should be actively encouraged to contribute to the collaboration because they may provide unique perspectives and feedback on firearm safety in their own homes and the homes of their friends (Center for Prevention Research and Development, 2006, p. 3). Attaining a critical mass of parent and youth participation would be essential to a successful collaboration.
The ultimate responsibility for improving the health of a community resides with the government, in the form of the public health department (Institute of Medicine, 2002, p. 185). Engaging the participation of the public health department is essential for two reasons. First, the success of any public health initiative depends to a significant extent on cooperation between the public health department and community stakeholders. Second, the local health department can provide an invaluable service by setting an evidence-based agenda. Although the health department could also assume a leadership role, members of the public who have the greatest stake in the outcome would be the better choice, because public health departments are bureaucracies and therefore prone to indifference. The public health department can best serve the collaboration by providing the information, planning, and funding necessary to make it a success.
Other important considerations include the history, neighborhood environment, and economic, ethnic, political, and religious diversity of the target community (Center for Prevention Research and Development, 2006, p. 3). Accordingly, the success of the collaboration's mission will be proportional to how representative the participants are of the broader community. In addition, each participant should enjoy equal standing within the collaboration.
If a representative sample of gun shop owners could be convinced to become active participants, the collaboration would be strengthened in a number of ways. Gun shop owners could serve as gun safety and gun lock experts, in addition to providing information to customers at the point of sale. The Chamber of Commerce should also be encouraged to participate — not only because many of its members are probably parents, but also because participation would provide access to corporations within the community through a respected partner and serve as a valuable conduit for communication to the wider community.
According to the NRA (2013), gun ownership continues to set records. Between 1991 and 2011, Americans purchased 120 million new firearms, including tens of millions of high-capacity semi-automatic rifles referred to as assault weapons. The threat this trend poses to the health of children and adolescents is clear, especially since gun-owning parents are more likely to store their guns unlocked and loaded (Coyne-Beasley, Schoenbach, & Johnson, 2001). The findings of several empirical studies have revealed that CAP laws are effective for reducing child firearm accidents and suicides, and the best chance for getting this legislation enacted is through the mobilization of the community via collaboration.
Brindley, M. (2013, February 12). Keeping guns loaded, unlocked at home with children can be deadly. Retrieved from
Center for Prevention Research and Development. (2006). Evidence-based practices for effective community coalitions. Champaign, IL: Center for Prevention Research and Development, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois. Retrieved from
Children's Safety Network. (2013). Prevention of firearm-related injuries & death: Resource Guide 2013. Retrieved from
Clark, N. M., Doctor, L. J., Friedman, A. R., Lachance, L. L., Houle, C. R., Geng, X., et al. (2006). Community coalitions to control chronic disease: Allies Against Asthma as a model and case study. Health Promotion Practice, 7(2), 14S–22S.
Coyne-Beasley, T., Schoenbach, V. J., & Johnson, R. M. (2001). "Love our kids, lock your guns": A community-based firearm safety counseling and gun lock distribution program. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 155, 659–664.
DeFilippis, E., & Hughes, D. (2014, June 17). Guns kill children: The overwhelming evidence that pediatricians are right and the NRA is wrong. Retrieved from
DeSimone, J., Markowitz, S., & Xu, J. (2013). Child access prevention laws and nonfatal gun injuries. Southern Economic Journal, 80(1), 5–25.
Hepburn, L., Azrael, D., Miller, M., & Hemenway, D. (2006). The effect of child access prevention laws on unintentional child firearm fatalities, 1979–2000. Journal of Trauma, 61, 423–428.
Institute of Medicine. (2002). The future of the public's health in the 21st century. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Retrieved from
McLean, S. (1997). A communication analysis of community mobilization on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Journal of Health Communication, 2(2), 113–125.
NRA. (2013, February 15). Gun ownership at all-time high, nation's murder rate at nearly all-time low. Retrieved from
Webster, D. W., Vernick, J. S., Zeoli, A. M., & Manganello, J. A. (2004). Association between youth-focused firearm laws and youth suicides. Journal of the American Medical Association, 292(5), 594–601.
Yang, E., Foster-Fishman, P., Collins, C., & Ahn, S. (2012). Testing a comprehensive community problem-solving framework for community coalitions. Journal of Community Psychology, 40(6), 681–698.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.