On a sunny Saturday morning in June in the parking lot of the Heart of Longmont, United Methodist Church, Ann Noonan is welcoming a steady stream of people with a simple pitch: come get a free gun safe.
"Ok people we are ready, thank you for coming," she said to the crowd who had assembled before the 9 a.m. start time.
Volunteers are handing out free gun safes to community members. Some leave with a lockbox for their vehicle. Others take home a larger safe designed to keep firearms secure inside the house. Some, like Caitlin, are leaving with both.
"I have other safes, but I wanted a car safe and I have two pistols now, so, you know, a bigger safe," she said.
Nearby, Melissa is picking up a safe of her own.
"I recently purchased a gun, and I do have one small safe for home, but these are more secure than where I've been storing it right now," she said. Her motivation was partly the people in her life. "I have friends with kids who come visit my house, so I definitely wanted to make sure my gun is more safe at home. I don't have my own kids, so."
The giveaway is one of a series of events organized by Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty's office in partnership with local community groups. Dougherty is one of the Democratic candidates for Colorado's Attorney General. This event's partners included United Church of Christ Longmont, Rocky Mountain Equality, Heart of Longmont and the Longmont Community Foundation. The goal is straightforward: make it easier for gun owners to securely store firearms.
Volunteers guide participants through the process, demonstrating how the safes work.
"And this is where you'll set your combination," explains Dede Alspaugh, a volunteer and member of United Church of Christ Longmont.
Alspaugh is also letting people know about Colorado's gun storage laws. Just moments earlier, a participant had been surprised to learn that there is a state law that requires firearms left in unattended vehicles be secured.
"The last person just said, 'There is?' so it sounded like he was unaware," Alspaugh said.
Finding middle ground on a divisive issue
Ann Noonan, also with UCC Longmont, helps coordinate the giveaways. She says the effort is designed to find common ground on an issue that often divides people.
"We use the phrase agree to agree. Can't we all agree that we don't want children or other vulnerable populations or crime to use guns?" she said.
Organizers deliberately avoid political debates.
"We don't engage in political conversation here. We've had a couple of times when people come in and say 'I love guns, why are you doing this?' but not very often," Noonan said.
Instead, the focus is on safety. Noonan says she has seen people from across the political spectrum participate, including some she might not have expected.
"We literally had a militia member come through one time and I noticed he had a patch, and then I also noticed he had a weapon in the back of his belt. So I was very happy that he was coming and getting safe storage options for his family," she said.
For Noonan, that's evidence the program is reaching beyond traditional audiences.
"It's been more open to a wider population and so that's one of our big motivations."
The demand for vehicle safes in particular has been striking. At one of the first events, Noonan remembers organizers quickly running out.
"I left and went to a store and bought 20 to bring them back because people were asking for them."
Research shows safe storage is effective
Research suggests secure firearm storage can have a significant impact.
Erin Kelly is director of practice for the University of Colorado Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative and an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health. She says Colorado has developed a strong system for getting locking devices to people who need them. This includes the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Let's Talk Guns campaign which educates people on the importance of securely storing firearms, using some sort of locking device like a gun safe, a cable lock or even locked cabinets.
"Colorado has a really robust system of doing a lot of work to support getting locking devices out to families and individuals who need them," Kelly said.
She says securely storing guns reduces the risk of accidental shootings, particularly among children.
"One of the biggest impacted members of the household if a firearm isn't securely stored is children and adolescents."
Many parents, she says, underestimate how easily children can find a firearm in the home.
"Parents or guardians believe that even if they have a firearm in the house, that hiding it on that top shelf or under the bed or in a cabinet somewhere is totally appropriate."
But studies tell a different story.
"Seventy one percent of the parents who had a firearm in the house believed their children couldn't access it. But 41 percent of those exact group of kiddos could actually access that firearm in less than an hour," Kelly said.
Colorado law requires firearms to be securely stored when an unsupervised child could gain access to them. But Kelly says the larger goal goes beyond legal compliance.
"I think the broader idea is, what's more important is that parents and guardians really buy in themselves to why that's a really important practice to protect their children from any potential harm."
Secure storage is also important for protecting people at risk of suicide. Kelly says that requires a more involved conversation.
"So if we have someone who has a gun safe, for example, that's in the home, but is the person who also is having suicidal ideation, what needs to happen is that either the keypad or the actual combination, those need to be changed and given to someone else if that person wants to keep the firearm in the house."
Kelly said the best practice is if there's suicidal ideation in a household with a gun, temporarily remove the firearms from the house while someone accesses the mental healthcare that they need during that time.
Preventing gun violence with secure storage
For Boulder District Attorney Mike Dougherty, safe storage is one piece of a broader strategy to reduce gun violence. He says prosecutions and legislative reforms are important, but prevention efforts like the safe giveaway can stop tragedies before they happen.
"So many of the shootings we have in the metro area are with stolen guns, and so many of the teen suicides that we have throughout Colorado, of which we have too many, are with guns that kids should not be able to access," Dougherty said.
He says the giveaways are grounded in respect for both gun ownership and community safety.
"And to me, it's about not falling into hyper-partisan divides or the political rock fight over gun safety, but rather saying, 'People have a Second Amendment right to possess a firearm, but we also have as a community, a right to try to reduce gun violence, and for me I view it as an obligation.'"
Back at the church, volunteers continue to demonstrate locks and answer questions. The conversations are practical, not political, and that distinction matters, says Noonan.
"The topic is so polarized and people feel, on the side of safety, we often feel paralyzed about we can't do anything because it causes so much disruption. And this is a way to meet in the middle."
This was the eighth gun safe giveaway hosted in Boulder County. More are planned.
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