Don't be shy about firearms

Like me, Martha Schütz had known about the ASK campaign for quite some time.

Like me, the Chapel Hill mother of two (one middle schooler, one high school student) thought it was such a smart idea: Before you let your child go to any friend's home, ask whether the home contains any firearms. If so, ask whether the firearms are stored appropriately, in a gun safe, with the ammunition stored separately.

I wrote about the campaign, "Asking Saves Kids," launched by a national nonprofit called PAX, four years ago.

But to be perfectly honest, I've never once asked parents about guns.

Neither has Schütz.

I guess I've been too embarrassed to raise the question. As Schütz put it, you like to think the parents and kids you know and like wouldn't have firearms, or certainly wouldn't have them improperly stored in a home with children.

That's a risky assumption, of course. Because firearms are present in an estimated 40 percent of homes with children. Do the math.

Recently, Schütz, a member of the group North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (in fact, the daughter of the woman who helped come up with the idea) heard about the ASK campaign again. This time, she heard about a mother in Winston-Salem who requested permission to distribute ASK pamphlets in her school system.

Two weeks later, pamphlets were distributed to nearly 50,000 students in Forsyth County.

Schütz decided to try the same thing in her own community.

To her delight, the leaders of Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools immediately said yes.

PAX sent her more than 10,000 pamphlets, including a version aimed at high school students.

Last week, Schütz and 14 volunteers distributed them to the schools.

Of course, not every school district is as progressive as Chapel Hill-Carrboro. But Schütz knows well that even the grooviest communities are not exempt from gun violence. Her older child attended high school with Adam Sapikowski, the teen accused in the shooting deaths of his own parents last spring.

The stories of young kids (I think of my three boys and shudder) finding a loaded gun and trying it out -- to disastrous effect -- are legion in our society.

So what's the downside of asking about firearms and their storage?

There is none.

Folks who have their guns stored properly shouldn't be threatened by the question.

I hope the pamphlets give parents, at least in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, permission -- and an opening -- to bring it up right along with booster seats, allergies and other basic safety questions when our kids are visiting friends.

I hope the campaign spreads across the Triangle.

Schütz, a freelance book editor, put it neatly: "If guns are going to be so prevalent, why should the subject be so off limits?"

When it comes to kids and firearms, it's so much better to know.

But to know, you have to ask.

(For more information about PAX's ASK campaign, or about getting pamphlets into your school system, visit www.paxusa.org/ask/ index.html)