Cherry Creek School District hands out gun locks to families, no ...

Cherry Creek School District hands out gun locks to families 03:01

A school may seem like an odd place to find a lock for your gun but the Cherry Creek School District believes otherwise. It is working alongside the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office to provide gun locks to parents, free of charge, no questions asked. It's an effort by the district's superintendent to address growing concerns around gun violence, including teen suicide.

"My reaction was 'Good on you.' This is something that needs to happen," said Kasey Ellis, a teacher and president of the Cherry Creek Education Association.

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This week, around 300 gun locks were distributed across the district through the sheriff's office. Superintendent Christopher Smith reached out to parents and staff via email about the effort with the following letter to the "Cherry Creek Schools Community":

Every year, we lose students and staff in the Cherry Creek School District to gun violence, including suicide by firearm. Suicides are on the rise across the country, according to CDC data. In CCSD, suicide threat assessments are also increasing. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Responsible and safe gun storage in the home can save lives. A state gun storage law took effect July 1, 2021, that requires Colorado gun owners to securely store their firearms when not in use to prevent access by unsupervised juveniles and other unauthorized users.
Any single step we can take to prevent suicide and save a life is a step worth taking.
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office has provided gun locks for CCSD schools to hand out free of charge to families. The gun locks are available in baskets in the entryways of schools along with pamphlets about how to use the locks. No questions will be asked when families access the gun locks.
For more information about how to safely store guns, visit Project Child Safe from the National Shooting Sports Foundation or the Department of Veteran Affairs' Suicide Prevention is Everyone's Business: A Toolkit for Safe Firearm Storage in Your Community
Important information about suicide prevention can be found here.
Thank you for your partnership in ensuring the safety and Whole Wellbeing of our students.  

Ellis thinks it's likely the district's actions will be met with some criticism, but she's been teaching for nearly 30 years and the pressures students face have evolved drastically.

"Unfortunately we've had a significant number of suicides over the years and a lot of those have been by a firearm so I think the district is trying taking a proactive approach," she said.

It's not something she had anticipated the district would do and while surprised by the move, Ellis and others firmly believe it will save a life.

"My VP and I were actually talking today, that this is kind of a-typical of Cherry Creek. Some people will think this is a great thing and some people are going to think this is not a great thing. That we are making something out of nothing. But I was just in a building earlier this year where a student had committed suicide via firearm, and I saw the devastation on the educators' faces, the administrators' faces and the students'," said Ellis.

RELATED: Inside America's youth mental health crisis

The district says suicidal threat assessments are on the rise, meaning more educators are identifying students who may need intervention. The state trains districts in ways to make the assessments and says not only are suicide assessments on the rise, behavioral assessments are as well.

"I believe we are seeing, in most school districts, more both behavioral threat assessments as well as suicide assessments being done. In some cases it's probably because there are more kids at risk, but in other cases I think it's because our schools are better trained and they're just doing more of them when they see anything out of the ordinary and they want to make sure that students have the resources that they need to support them," said Christine Harms, Director of the School Safety Resource Center for the Department of Public Safety.

The gun locks could also help to address the behavioral risks as well. Gun violence among youth has been a growing concern across the Denver metro area.

"We're taking one step to maybe one day, doing away with lockdown drills. Doing away with the anxiety it causes kids," said Ellis.