Aaleah McConnell: Could tell me in your own words about the NC SAFE program, and why it was needed?
William L. Lassiter: So NC SAFE stands for North Carolina, secure all firearms effectively and the purpose of this campaign is to make sure that we limit the access of firearms to people that aren't supposed to have them, like youth and criminals that have felony records that aren't allowed to possess firearms anymore.
And the reason why we thought this campaign was extremely important was because we're seeing an increase in the number of homicides and suicides among young people, and by older people in our state. Homicides due to gun violence now has become the number one killer of young people in North Carolina, overpassing car accidents last year.
McConnell: What are you all's plans for limiting that access?
Lassiter: That's right. So the campaign itself is a public service announcement, public awareness campaign that we're doing across the state North Carolina about why safe, secure, storage is important in the state of North Carolina, and so we're doing that by doing public service announcements, by doing bus wraps, by doing social media campaigns.
We're also distributing gun locks. We've distributed over 50,000 already across the state of North Carolina. We just got another 60,000 in that we will be distributing across the state and with the gun lock, it actually has instructions on how to use the gun lock. It has a link to a video that shows a highway patrolman actually securing their farm and showing someone how to do that. So there's no excuses.
McConnell: Now are there other resources that you all make available?
Lassiter: So on the website, which is NCSAFE.org, there are all kinds of resources that are listed on the website.
The resources if you want to hold an event in your local area, say at your PTA meeting, or at your church or at a civic group, we've got a PowerPoint that you can use, and the resources that you would need to explain to people why this is important.
And we also have resources on that website that show parents, how do you have the conversation if your child's going over to spend the night at a friend's house, how do you have the conversation with that other parent about whether or not they've got their farm securely stored or not?
So there's all kinds of resources on the website, videos that show people how to actually use gun locks on the website, and so that's NCSAFE.org
McConnell: Since 2019 you've been the chair of the NC Task Force for Safer Schools?
Lassiter: Yes, that’s correct.
McConnell: Can you kind of tell me, from that experience, what have you noticed are some of the root causes for this issue?
Lassiter: Yeah, so we've looked at a lot of data as far as what's causing gun violence to occur in our communities, but also on school campuses.
Seeing guns come onto school campuses, you know, it's a root cause problem. I say that the gun coming on the school campus is typically, you know, the big thing that everybody sees, but there's an underlying issue that that child was either feeling bullied, discriminated, not treated fairly at school, or was was scared about gang activity in their community and felt like they had to carry a gun to keep themselves safe. And so what we really need to do is find out why kids are feeling that unsafe coming onto school campuses in the first place.
M: Aside from NC safe, are there any other state programs or initiatives that target this issue.
L: Yeah, so we're doing a program called EKG in schools, which stands for educating kids about guns and gangs. And this is a program where as a can be taught in the health classrooms. And we piloted in 13 local education agencies across the state of North Carolina last year. I think in your area, Pitt County was probably the closest one where we had a pilot of that program. Our goal is to spread it to all school districts across the state of North Carolina in the next couple of years.
M: And I just wanted to ask, are there any final things that you want to let people know?
L: Yes, you have a right to bear arms in this in state of North Carolina, United States, you have that right, but you also have a responsibility to make sure that that property remains in your protection so that it doesn't get into the wrong hands.
M: Well, that's all the questions I have. Thank you D.S. Lassiter so much for your time.
L: Okay, thank you very much.
NC Safe Stats by Ben Schachtman on Scribd
