Penn is giving out free gun safes to help Philadelphians secure their firearms

On Monday morning, Gordon Cliett took his mother to a doctor’s appointment — and came home with a gun safe.

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 mother, Valerie Lipford, 74, both picked up gun locks, made from a cable that winds around a gun to prevent it from being loaded or fired, and safes. Both own guns for personal protection at their West Philadelphia homes, and wanted to ensure young children in the family can’t access them.

The giveaway is part of a long-running effort at Penn and other health systems in Philadelphia to help gun owners keep their firearms away from children in the home.

“I’d rather be safe than sorry,” Cliett said.

Cliett, a construction worker, already has a gun lock, and wanted the safe 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 doesn’t want her grandchildren finding the gun when they visit.

“I have a young grandson, and I don’t want him to start messing with things he doesn’t understand,” she said. “He knows it’s not a toy, but kids are curious.”

In Philadelphia, 12 children were killed in accidental shootings between 2016 and mid-2024, according to police records, and, nationally, gunshot wounds are the leading cause of death for children.

Guns also present a suicide risk for children under 18; most kids who die by suicide from a gunshot wound used a gun found in their home or a relative’s, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports.

Children are safest in homes without guns, the AAP advises, but about a third of American children live in homes with guns, including an estimated 4.6 million kids who live in homes where guns are unlocked and loaded.

Hospitals like Penn and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have been handing out gun locks for years, but Monday’s gun safe giveaway was an attempt to provide more options to gun owners.

“The safest way to store a gun is unloaded and locked up,” said Sunny V. Jackson, a registered nurse and the Injury Prevention Coordinator at Penn’s trauma center. But some gun owners might believe they need quicker access to a gun in an emergency, she said. Giving away gun safes can “meet people where they are” and get more gun owners to secure their weapons, she said.

“If they’re less likely to use the cable lock, at least they can secure their gun away from kids,” said Neda Khan, the director of strategy and operations at Penn’s Center for Health Care Innovation, who was also giving out safes Monday.

Interest in the giveaway was high. When Jackson and Khan arrived in the Perelman Center lobby at 11 a.m., they found a line of patients and staff waiting for them.

By 11:30, they’d handed out all 21 safes. (Anyone who missed the chance to get a safe in person could sign up to have one mailed to their house.)

Within an hour, they’d given out about 60 gun locks as well.

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, doesn’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 didn’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 don’t play around with this stuff,” he said.

» READ MORE: Twenty-four children were killed in shootings in Philadelphia in 2023. These are their stories.

Khan said the health system has already given away about 60 safes in a similar program at Center City’s Pennsylvania Hospital, targeted specifically at people who tried to enter the hospital carrying a gun. Now, Penn is extending those efforts with a grant from the state Department of Health.

Currently, the gun safe program is for Philadelphia residents only, but Penn hopes to give away safes to patients and staff who live in the city’s collar counties as well.

“Gun violence is a huge problem, in Philadelphia especially,” Khan said. “If we can help get the word out that there are safe ways to handle a gun, it leads to less firearm trauma.”