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St. Louis School District Joins Citywide Effort to Launch Gun Safety Program

  • St. Louis Public Schools is on a mission to provide children with a safe summer under their new Educators for Gun Safety initiative.

    The district has partnered with several city charter schools to launch a long-term program to stop the gun-related killings that have impacted schools, communities, and families.

    As part of the Educators for Gun Safety initiative, free gun locks will be distributed at a series of events. The initiative will also educate parents and students on safe weapons handling and has prepared toolkits with handouts and videos about gun safety.

    Gun violence rates tend to rise in the summer and St. Louis has recently seen gun violence directed more toward younger children. In the first few months of 2022, seven children under 18 were shot and killed in the city, and more than 27 were wounded.

    St. Louis leaders also noted the impact of shootings on classrooms and families and called for the need for more counselors and licensed clinical social workers in schools.

    “We have become a gun-inundated society. One consequence is that our children are dying in increasingly frequent and completely preventable shootings,” said St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams. “Ideally, we would like to remove guns from the equation altogether, but that’s not the reality we live in. What we can do is make sure guns are locked and stored safely.”