Philadelphia needs a citywide gun lock campaign — now

Last week, a group of city officials gave out 100 free gun locks near a Brewerytown home where a 2-year-old girl was fatally shot on July 27 by her 14-year-old cousin.

The gun used in the shooting was unsecured.

I commend their efforts. But it’s not enough.

That’s not a dig. They know that — which is why in addition to handing out the locks, they spoke of the immediate need for commonsense gun reform, including safe storage requirements and a revised lost and stolen reporting bill.

Yes — of course, yes — to all of the long-overdue measures to help save lives that are stuck in governmental gridlock thanks to Republicans who pledge more allegiance to the National Rifle Association than to American lives.

But in a nation with more firearms than people, where guns are the No. 1 killer of children, we can’t hold our breath for a legislative solution, especially when every day, an average of eight children are injured or killed by an unlocked or unsupervised gun in the home. The 2-year-old was the youngest victim to die of a gunshot in Philadelphia this year; at least seven other children have been shot unintentionally by an unsecured gun.

What we need — right now — is a citywide gun lock campaign, an all-hands, all-platform awareness and education effort to get out the lifesaving message about the importance of securing guns.

We need to see this message on highway billboards, on subways and trains, in every doctor’s office and municipal building — here’s a gun lock with your marriage license, you happy couple! Congrats, it’s a boy — here’s a gun lock! Even in this newspaper. In 1998, the Daily News launched a campaign to give away free gun locks. The paper expected to get 1,000 requests. It gave away 5,000.

It won’t be a cure-all. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for one of those, but it’s a small step that could mean the difference between life and death.

Scott Charles, Temple University Hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator, has a front-row seat to the carnage that guns wreak in this city. He has been offering gun locks on Twitter, no questions asked, for years. He’s also been slaying the trolls who come after him for his tweets about guns and gun violence.

Because here’s the thing: Charles isn’t just another gun safety advocate. He’s also a gun owner, a responsible gun owner who keeps his weapon safely stored away because he knows that despite arguments that an intruder won’t wait for a gun owner to unlock his weapon, the chances of a child accessing an unsecured gun in a home are high.

Between gun locks he’s given out personally, those distributed through the hospital’s Safe Bet website, and others he provides to various organizations across the city, Charles estimates he’s given out 10,000 gun locks.

If you’re wondering if that’s a good number, as I did, Charles wants you to think about this another way.

“The truth is that those gun locks cost me less than $2 each,” said Charles, who is working on expanding the hospital’s program. “When I’m giving them out, I’m having a conversation with people about the importance of gun safety. So I don’t know if it’s a good number — but I think it speaks to the opportunities I’ve had to talk about gun safety with individuals who take gun locks from me.”

Those opportunities are key: “People who are buying guns through legitimate means are getting gun locks with those guns,” said Charles. “The problem is, we know that hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen each year. Those guns are on the black market. A lot of people who are prohibited from owning guns legally get their guns through those illegitimate means. And while we might think that, ‘Well, that’s on them,’ no child should pay the ultimate price for the mistakes that their parents are making.”

Philadelphia police said the gun that killed the toddler had been reported stolen in South Carolina. The grandmother of the 2-year-old is now facing charges.

The 14-year-old who fired the gun is diagnosed with severe Down syndrome.

That’s just one of the many heart-wrenching details of this calamity, where the girl’s mother ran into the street, her bleeding child in her arms, screaming for help. Where neighbors and police and doctors tried in vain to save her, and where one child is now dead and another is left to live with a loss that could have been easily preventable.

“My fault. My fault,” witnesses recalled the 14-year-old saying.

Of course it wasn’t his fault. A child is never at fault for the poor choices made by the adults around them. But until we do everything we can — small and large — to keep children safe, the fault will continue to land squarely on every one of us.