On Monday night, Gordon Cliett took his family to a doctor’s appointment — and came home with a firearm comfortable.
Cliett, 50, had spotted the display in the lobby at Penn Medicine’s Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine in West Philadelphia, where staff had set up a table to give away  , safes , and , gun locks  , to promote gun safety.
Cliett and his family, Valerie Lipford, 74, both picked up weapons hair, made from a cord that winds around a weapon to stop it from being loaded or fired, and compartments. Both of their West Philadelphia homes have personal safety guns, and they wanted to prevent access for their young children.
The giveaway is part of a long-running work at , Penn and various health systems in Philadelphia , to support gun users keep their firearms away from children in the home.
” I’d rather be safe than sorry”, Cliett said.
Cliett, a building contractor, now has a gun lock, and wanted the protected as an added layer of protection for his children, who are 15 and 13. Lipford, who used to keep her gun under her pillow, said she will now lock it in the safe: She does n’t want her grandchildren finding the gun when they visit.
” I have a young grandson, and I do n’t want him to start messing with things he does n’t understand”, she said. ” He knows it’s not a toys, but children are curious”.
In Philadelphia, 12 children were killed in , sudden shootings , between 2016 and mid-2024, according to police data, and, nationwide, bullet wounds are  , the leading cause of death for children.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, kids under 18 are also at risk of suicide if they die from bullet wounds in their homes or through relatives.
Kids are safest in houses without guns, the AAP advises, but about a third of American kids live in homes with weapons, including an estimated 4.6 million kids who live in homes , where weapons are unlocked and loaded.
More choices for safer gun store
Gun secure giveaway on Monday is an attempt to give gun users more choices than previously available weapons-related stores like Penn and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Unloading and locking up a gun is the safest way to store it, according to Sunny V. Jackson, a registered nurse and Penn’s pain center’s injury prevention coordinator. However, she said, some weapon owners may feel they require quick access to a weapon in an emergency. She said that giving away gun safes is “meet persons where they are” and encourage more gun owners to keep their weapons safe.
” If they’re less likely to use the wire plug, at least they may secure their weapon away from kids”, said Neda Khan, the chairman of approach and functions at Penn’s Center for Health Care Innovation, who was also giving out compartments Monday.
The giveaway generated a lot of interest. At 11 a.m., Jackson and Khan discovered a line of patients and staff waiting for them in the Perelman Center lobby.
By 11: 30, they’d handed out all 21 safes. ( Anyone who did n’t get a safe in person could sign up to have one delivered to their home. )
Within an hour, they’d given out about 60 gun locks as well.
You do n’t experiment with this, I assure you.
Patients, staff, and passersby said they were eager for the opportunity to keep their guns in a safer place. Tamara Cross, an administrative assistant at Penn, does n’t have young kids, but will have nieces and nephews visiting her home for the holidays. ” I feel a whole lot better” having a safe at hand, she said.
Jonathan Rodriguez, 41, an Uber driver from North Philadelphia, said his children did n’t learn he owned guns until recently — when they left home to go to college. He already has a gun safe at home, but signed up to receive another. ” You do n’t play around with this stuff”, he said.
Khan claimed that a similar program at Center City’s Pennsylvania Hospital, which targeted people who attempted to enter the facility with a gun, has already been distributed by the health system. Penn is currently using a grant from the state Department of Health to further those efforts.
Pennsylvania currently only offers safes to residents of Philadelphia, but Penn plans to also distribute safes to employees and patients who reside in the city’s collar counties.
” Gun violence is a huge problem, in Philadelphia especially”, Khan said. It reduces gun trauma by encouraging people to spread the word that there are safe ways to handle guns.
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