CSTS podcast series
Let’s Talk About Your Guns
Episode 3: Keeping Kids Safe
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NOTES

AUDIO
DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: Nicholas Wiley was ayoung man in his early twenties and he was living withhis grandparents along with his two year old son,Benjamin.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: On September 12th,
2016, Nicholas and his son Benjamin were watching
TV together.
And this morning Benjamin wanted to watch a different
show.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: His dad, Nicholas, sent
him to the back bedroom to go watch what he wanted
to watch on his iPad.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: As Benjamin waswalking back to his own room, he looked in the room
where Nicholas slept and he saw Nicholas's gun on
the nightstand.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: Benjamin Smith wasfamiliar with toy guns. He had Nerf guns. He had water
pistols, he had toy guns.

1And because he was so familiar with the toy guns that
he had, there was no barrier in Benjamin's mind thatguns were dangerous.
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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: Nicholas, who was in
the other room heard this deafening boom. He rushed
into his bedroom. And saw little Benjamin lying therewith a hole in his chest.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: Nicholas cradled
Benjamin in his arms. He immediately called 911
asking how he could help his son and to haveemergency responders come immediately. He tried tosave his son's life. Everybody tried to save little
Benjamin's life. But they were unsuccessful.

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Transition to new beat

DR WEST: An estimated 4.6 million American children
live in homes with guns that are loaded and unlocked.
More than 700 children die each year due to firearms.
Matthew Weintraub is the Bucks County, Pennsylvania
district attorney. He believes had Benjamin's father
stored his guns safely that day, Benjamin might still bealive.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: When Nicholas Wiley
was asked what had happened, he swore up anddown that his gun was made safe. He had stored it
safely. But he was wrong. The safety was off, and the2gun was on a nightstand, which was for a two-year-old
is right about chest level. And so it was a perfectcalamity of terrible events that enabled young
Benjamin to see the gun, grab the gun, turn it on
himself and fire it.
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DR WEST: I’m Curt West: Associate Professor of
Psychiatry and Scientist at the Center for the Study ofTraumatic Stress. Today, in Let’s Talk about Your Guns
we’ll learn how Benjamin’s death led to acommunity-wide campaign for safe storage.

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DR WEST: We’ll also talk to Dr Alison Tothy, apediatrician and an advocate for child safety.

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DR WEST: She’ll share some strategies for how tomake sure your children are safe when there arefirearms in the home.

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DR WEST: Firearm safety in the home is built aroundfive principles. Weapons should be stored unloaded.
They should be taken apart or stored with a disabling
device engaged. They should be stored in locked
containers, and ammunition should be stored in a
separate locked container. Finally, firearm safety in thehome involves having a plan for storing guns in analternate location during times of crisis.

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DR WEST: All of these principles are especially
important when there are children around. Children as
young as 2 years old may be strong enough to pull a
trigger.
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DR WEST: Our goal today is to give you the tools tohave open and honest conversations about safe
storage. Conversations that may save your child’s life.
So now… Let’s Talk about Your Guns.

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DR WEST: Mr. Weintraub, Benjamin’s father was
ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter,endangering the welfare of a child and recklessendangerment.
To the outside observer, it feels like it's very harsh that
Nicholas would be prosecuted for this in light of thefact that he tragically lost his son. How hard was thatfor you to prosecute that case?

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: This was one of thetoughest decisions I've ever had to make. I havechildren, I have two kids, and I'm a gun owner. And I
really wrestled with this.
People would say to me, well, this parent is alreadygoing to suffer a life sentence because he's
responsible, whether we charge them or not, for thedeath of his only son, his two year old son, his pride4and joy, the light in his life. And I get that. And he's still
serving that moral sentence.
But it's incumbent upon adults to make sure that theseweapons are safely secured and stored.
I think it's fair to say that children are counting on us
as adults to protect them. A child should never be putin the situation where they have to make the decision
whether a gun is safe to handle or not. They justshould not be able to handle a gun that is unsafe. So
it's an adult’s responsibility to make sure that thoseguns are stored safely and properly so that we will
never have to face another incident like the death of
Benjamin Smith again.
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DR WEST: Dr Alison Tothy is a pediatric emergency
physician on the south side of Chicago. She’s seencases like Benjamin’s before.

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DR ALISON TOTHY: This is just such a sad story. And
it's one of many. About one third of homes with kids
have guns in them, and many are left unlocked andunloaded.
Between 2015 and 2020, there were at least 2100
unintentional shootings by children that resulted inroughly 800 deaths and 1400 non-fatal gun injuries.
And in fact, in 2020 alone, at least 125 toddlers under
the age of five shot themselves or someone else.

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DR WEST: Those must be absolutely devastating
injuries to a child that small.
DR ALISON TOTHY: The risk of lifelong trauma is justenormous.
Often these aren't just graze wounds. They're maiming
events. So a kid picks up a gun and they have to use
two hands, for instance, to pick up the gun and the gungoes off and it destroys their dominant hand, forinstance, so that they grow up with one functioning
hand or arm. They shoot someone else and they shootthem in the face and it doesn't cause death, but it
causes blindness, for instance, or some sort ofabsolutely devastating injury. And so theconsequences are enormous.
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DR WEST: The American Academy of Pediatrics uses
the term “unintentional child shooting” anddifferentiates that from an accident. Can you talk alittle bit about that?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: You know, an accident is a childfell off their bike while they were learning to ride andthey scraped their knee but an unintentional injury issomething that we can absolutely prevent. We canprevent unintentional gun gun injuries by locking up
our guns separately from ammunition should we havea gun in the home. These are preventable injuries.
And so when we talk about unintentional, it's the fact

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that we haven't done enough to prevent our children
from picking up the gun and harming themselves or
harming someone else.
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DR WEST: So I’ve heard the term “attractive nuisance”
to describe what firearms can be to kids. Would you
agree with that?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: It's so true, right? It just captures
exactly what a gun is to a kid. Guns are so tempting.
Everyone sees them in the media and in television andin movies and on video games, whether it's cartoon
ified effects of it or or very realistic versions of shooting
a gun and it's just so attractive to kids.
Think about the kids that you've seen on theplayground that maybe have never, ever come acrossa gun before. But yet one of the things they're doing isthey're picking up a stick and they're there playpretending that it's a gun or they are, you know,
making a gun sign with their hand and using it to shootpeople. It is just so prevalent.

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DR WEST: Why would you say that hiding a gun is nota good option?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: Okay, well, so how many of you
when you were little, did you look for a holiday gifts?
Did you try to find your birthday gifts hidden? And yourparents thought that they were doing a really, reallygreat job hiding them, but you found them anyway.
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And the reality is that kids, you think that they're not inyour house, not wandering around your house, notlooking in all the nooks and crannies, but they are. And
truthfully, hiding a gun doesn't really work very well.
Kids will find them.
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DR WEST: Well, I think one of the challenges is we
make an assumption that we've told the kids don't dothat and that they won't do that. Right. Can you say
some more about why that can be an ineffective
strategy in terms of safety?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: There are a lot of reasons. It's
not that all children won't listen. I would never wantanyone listening to this to come away with well, then I
might as well not talk to my child about guns and gun
safety, because we should still be having
conversations with our children starting at a young age
about what it means to keep yourself safe. And talking
about guns, talking about not touching them, talking
about walking away if someone else touches the gun.
It just doesn't always work.
Just talking to your child about the dangers of firearms
is not enough. Kids are curious. They see a gun on a
bed stand or a nightstand, and they'd go to pick it up.
Both the gun and the ammunition need to be locked up
where children cannot have access to it.

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32.

DR WEST: How would you say risk changes according
to how old the child is?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: A lot of it has to do with
developmental age. Often at the toddler age, they're
incredibly curious. As you get older some of it is I want
to try it out to show off to a friend. And then certainly
there is a large group of teenagers that purposefully
harm themselves.

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DR WEST: So what you're saying is that development
or age actually makes a difference, although theoutcomes are still tragic. Could you say more about
the risk to teenagers with unsecured firearms in the
home?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: Sure. Absolutely. So one of thebiggest risks for self harm is gun violence, particularly
in male teenagers, but both in female and maleteenagers. It does happen and teenagers are
incredibly impulsive. It is one of the things that we love
about teenagers, but it's one of the things that we hateabout teenagers as well. They don't always think
before they make choices. And the gun violence is soquick, it's so fast. It happens in the blink of an eye thatthe impulsiveness of teenagers combined with thatbrevity of the potential for injury is super, superdangerous. And so teenagers and guns in the homereally are a dangerous mix.

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36.

DR WEST: I just want to clarify, was that risk primarilyrisk of suicide with teenagers or risk of gun violence at
the hands of other teenagers, perhaps?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: I think that the answer is yes toboth of those questions. Let me try and say it a little bit
differently.
Teens are impulsive and they are impulsive in somedramatic event or some event that happens to themand they decide, I don't want to be here anymore. I
don't want to live anymore. And having access to agun, in those moments of impulsivity, put them at reallyhigh risk for self-harm. The flip side can also betrue.They are equally dramatic in their relationships
with others. And we've seen it. Kids bring guns toschool, for instance. They harm others. And having
access to guns in those moments of impulsivity in theirfrustration with someone else can cause harm toothers around them.

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DR WEST: So far, we’ve been talking about the risks
to children and teens in their own home. How
concerned should parents be when their kids visit
somebody else’s house?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: There are, what, 4.6 million
unlocked and available guns in households across thecountry. And chances are you've sent your child to a10

playdate or to someone's house that there's probably a
gun available.
And we as parents need to take the responsibility on
ourselves to check in with the parents of kids that weresending for playdates or our sitters, our babysitters or
our other loved ones in the houses that we're sending
them to. We need to be the ones to have the first
conversations about whether or not there are guns in
the homes that we're sending our kids to.
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DR WEST: Right now, it doesn’t seem like that’s thenorm. Why do you think that is?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: I think that this is such a such achallenging conversation that that we don't do it. It is
incredibly uncomfortable. And it's more uncomfortable
than who's watching my kids or are you going to put
them in the car? Or when you put my child in the car,are you going to have a booster seat for them or makesure that they wear a seatbelt. Somehow asking about
guns in the homes is this huge taboo, and it can often
seem like it feels judgmental. Everyone has such
personal opinions about whether or not you should
own a gun, what you should be using to protect you
and your family. It's just a really hard thing to ask. It's
uncomfortable. And we as humans, shy away from theuncomfortable.

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42.

DR WEST: Now, you've actually put together an
initiative to talk about having this conversation. Right.
The ASK program.

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DR ALISON TOTHY: Yes. The American Academy of
Pediatrics for a long time has recognized that gun
violence is the public health epidemic that we all wantto prevent. And injuries from gun violence are killingkids at a really, really high rate. And so they designed
this A-S-K program and A-S-K and it is that Asking
Saves Kids. And it's this idea that we ask parents
when we send our kids to a playdate about firearms,
we ask if there are firearms in the house. And weframe it in ways that is non-judgmental but designed toprotect our children before we put them in a home with
guns.

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DR WEST: There's lots of things that parents think
about when it comes to safety and their kids going toother people's houses in particular. Are there parallels
that you can draw for us about other conversations?

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DR ALISON TOTHY: I think that if we align it withother injury prevention initiatives or safety precautions
that we might take before we send our child off tosomeone else's house. Examples that come to mind
are allergies. If my child had a significant peanut
allergy, one of the first things that I'm going to tell an
adult that's going to be responsible for my kid is my kid
cannot eat peanuts. Please make sure you read the12labels. And here, by the way, is the EpiPen that theymight need in case. And this is what to look for. But
remember, they cannot eat peanuts. And peanuts are
hidden in a lot of different foods. And so, please, canyou make sure before you give my kid a snack to readthe label? Call me if anything happens. Right. You
drop a six year old off who has just learned to swim ata pool party. You can assume that one of the things
you might do is tell the person that my kid just learned
to swim. Or you might ask, is there going to be a
lifeguard present? And so I think that if we bundle
asking about guns in the home in a normalizing way,
as we would other injuries, other injury prevention
techniques, then it would be easier to talk about guns.
You just need to ask.
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DR WEST: So it seems to me like you should also
think about how you’re going to respond if it sounds
like it’s not safe.

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DR ALISON TOTHY: Yeah. You have to decide ahead
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of time. Are you going to let your child be there?
What's the conversation? If you decide that you're notgoing to let your child go to that person's house, what's
the conversation you're going to have with your child?
What's the conversation you're going to have with thewith that family or the parents? Are you going to tellthem the truth? You know, I don't want my kid in ahome that has a gun. Are you going to fudge the truth13

a little bit and say, you know, how about we just have aplay date here and not give the reason why?
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For every possible answer that they might give, youneed to think about how you're going to respond.
Because it's not about the judgment of whether or not
you believe that someone should have a gun in theirhome.
And you can always follow up with, I'm not judging
you. I really just want to know because I want to beable to keep my child safe.
The more attention that we can place on making thisnormalized, the better.

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DR WEST: In Pennsylvania, District Attorney Matthew
Weintraub couldn’t forget Benjamin Smith’s accidental
death. He started a firearm safety campaign in thetoddler’s honor.

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: I'm thinking to myself,
there has to be a way to prevent the next one. And so I
started just researching it. And as it turns out, there isa Project Child Safe, which will allow law enforcement
access to free gun locks and frankly, as many as you
can order.
We partnered with some agencies in Bucks County,
some stakeholders here. And I thought we're going to
get these gun locks into the hands of as many people14

as we can. I can't make people use them, but I can
educate them that these gun locks are very easy touse. They can be used on revolvers, nine millimetersor semiautomatics. They can be used on long guns.
And they're very, very simple.
We partnered with our victim services group. Nova
We partnered with our Child Protective Services
Agency. The sheriff's department agreed to give themto every person that applies for a concealed carrypermit we've given them out at. County fairs or and thelike, we've given them to our local legislators to havein a basket. As you walk in. We just want to makethem so prevalent that it becomes the norm rather
than the exception.
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DR. WEST: And how do people respond?

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DA MATTHEW WEINTRAUB: People are are stunned
when you personalize it as a tragedy that actually took
the life of a little two year old boy, Benjamin Smith. So
once you grab their attention with that personalization,
there people are much more readily acceptable of this.
It's not like you're imposing your will on them. You're
just giving them a way to prevent the next Benjamin
Smith from getting killed in their house. And so the thethe the public's acceptance has been really great.
I'm glad that the program has has taken off. And I
know that we've saved lives.

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DR WEST: We all want our children to grow up healthyand safe. Keeping kids safe requires being sure they
don't have access to unsecured firearms. This means
having conversations with family members, friends,
even other parents, and encouraging safe storage.

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DR WEST: Thank you to Bucks County District
Attorney Matthew Weintraub and Dr Alison Tothy forparticipating in today’s discussion.

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DR WEST: You’ve been listening to Let’s Talk aboutYour Guns. This podcast is made possible by The
Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement ofMilitary Medicine Incorporated and is produced by theCenter for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the
Uniformed Services University in collaboration with
Podville Media.

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DR WEST: To learn more about our mission and for
additional resources, please visit cstsonline.org.

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DR WEST: Be sure to subscribe to the show on yourfavorite podcast app and leave a five-star review.
Thank you for listening.

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PRESENTER: The views expressed are those of the
speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views,
opinions, or policies of the Uniformed Services
16University, the Department of Defense, the US
Government, or The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for
the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc.
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PRESENTER: Mention of trade names, commercial
products, or organizations does not necessarily
constitute or imply endorsement by the Uniformed
Services University, the Department of Defense, or the
US Government or The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc.

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