Further Thoughts on The Ad Council's Gun Violence Prevention Campaign

Everything I told the Washington Post Creative Group

Following up on my recent Substack about “Agreeing to Agree to Prevent Gun Violence,” I promised to post my complete responses to questions posed to me by the Washington Post Creative Group for their #AgreeToAgree collab with the Ad Council.

Those questions and responses are below. The #AgreeToAgree campaign quote attributed to me was crafted from these responses:

With the right of gun ownership comes the responsibility to ensure that unauthorized people cannot access your firearms, ever. I keep guns I’m not using or don’t expect to use right away unloaded and locked in a large gun safe. Two rifles that do not fit in my gun safe are kept in locked cases, unloaded.

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Washington Post Creative Group x Ad Council Interview Questions and David Yamane answers:

1. As a gun owner yourself, is there a single piece of advice about gun safety you’d like to share with other gun owners?

This one is simple: With the right of gun ownership comes the responsibility to ensure that unauthorized people cannot access your firearms, ever.

2. What’s the number one thing you wish people understood about why gun injuries are the leading cause of death for children?

I don’t mean to be difficult here, but I wish people understood that saying “firearm-related injury” is the leading cause of death for “children” in the U.S. conceals some complexity that is very important for us to understand if we wish to address this complex set of problems.

(Some call gun violence a “wicked problem” for this reason.)

The premise of the question depends on how we understand “cause of death.” According to CDC WONDER data for 2018-2023, the leading cause of death for those aged 1 to 18 years is accidents (n=34,928), followed by homicide (n=14,615), and then suicide (n=13,188).

Firearm homicides and suicides combined (n=16,663) are less than half the number of accidental deaths in the U.S. over this six-year period.

This premise of the question also depends on how we define children. According to CDC WONDER data for 2018-2023, among children 1 to 9 years old, firearms are the 8 th leading mechanism of injury leading to death. Both motor vehicle accidents (n=3,770) and drowning (n=3,553) exceed firearm deaths (n=1,326) in this age group by a considerable margin.

Looking at adolescents (those between childhood and adulthood) changes the picture. Among those 10 to 18 years old, gun deaths (n=17,500) exceed motor vehicle deaths (n=13,469). In this age group, homicides (n=10,818) far outnumber suicides (n=5,845). Accidental gun deaths are rare in this age group (n=416).

Only one way of slicing the data pie yields the conclusion that “gun injuries are the leading cause of death for children.” The practical significance of this is in my answer to question #3.

(Note: Calculations are 6-year totals are from CDC Wonder using 2018-2023 single race results.)

3. Is there a common misconception that you’d like to correct about children and teens and gun safety?

The gun owning community has done an excellent job of promoting safe use of firearms for lawful purposes, including among youth. Almost all child and adolescent gun deaths are intentional. Unlike motor vehicle deaths, a mechanism to which gun injuries are often compared, they are rarely accidents. As noted in response to question #2, accidental deaths (n=34,928) continue to exceed intentional firearms injuries (homicide + suicide = 16,663) as a cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. Because almost all gun deaths are intentional, while almost all motor vehicle deaths are accidental, different approaches to ensuring safety are necessary.

4. Has gun violence personally affected your life? If so, would you be comfortable sharing how?

I have been fortunate not to have been directly affected by gun violence.

5. What is the number one action we can all take to better protect children and teens from gun injuries?

We need to invest in the mental health of children and adolescents to reduce gun deaths. This is obviously so for suicide, a clear indicator of the mental health crisis being experienced by so many youth. But such an investment would also begin to mitigate the unrecognized and untreated trauma that underlies other interpersonal gun violence, especially among marginalized youth and most especially inner-city African American boys.

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FOLOW UP: Can you tell us about everything you do to secure your guns—where and how you store them, what kind of safe or safes you use, where you keep your ammunition—those sorts of things?

Gun security in my home follows from the principle I stated in response to question 1: With the right of gun ownership comes the responsibility to ensure that unauthorized people cannot access my firearms.

To this end, I keep guns I am not using or do not expect to use right away unloaded and locked in a large gun safe. These include sporting shotguns, small caliber rifles and handguns for plinking, and odd caliber pistols and revolvers that I do not shoot often. There is no ammunition in that gun safe, but that is just a matter of space, not a safety decision.

Two rifles that do not fit in my gun safe are kept in locked cases, unloaded, but with loaded magazines in the case in case I need to load either rifle quickly.

I ensure pistols I may need to use right away while at home are responsibly staged. This includes placement in quick-access safes in my bedroom closet and on my nightstand, or staging in a holster that is kept on my body or within arms’ reach.

As a North Carolina concealed carry permit holder, when I carry my gun in public, I always ensure it is secured on my body in a holster. When I return home, the gun stays with me. Following the motto that “your car is not a holster,” I never leave a firearm in my car overnight.

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