Each year, the Chicago Police Department seizes 10,000 illegal guns and arrests thousands of people for illegal gun possession. Yet guns remain plentiful and easy to acquire, and young people who live in dangerous neighborhoods say they feel unsafe without them.
One organization is trying a different tactic, telling those youths: Keep your guns if you must, but learn how to handle them safely.
The approach uses the philosophy of harm reduction, better known drug addiction and public health. Harm reduction aims to be practical and nonjudgmental, offering help without insisting on abstinence, reports the New York Times.
Stick Talk, a Chicago collective, has taken to teaching small groups of teenagers and young adults skills like first aid for gunshot wounds and how to avoid accidental discharges.
“We found out that a lot of the stuff they teach our children are not working,” said Malik Cole, 27, who conducts Stick Talk workshops in a state-run juvenile lockup where he was detained as a youth. “Kids still dying.”
Stick Talk, he said, asked young people what they wanted to learn “to help them survive in life.”
Owning a gun is illegal for people under 21 in Chicago, and Stick Talk does not teach participants how to fire weapons. It does teach them how to carry, clean and store a gun and how to act during a police stop. Lifesaving techniques are taught by Ujimaa Medics, a Black health collective.
The approach is similar to that of a safe injection site, where people use illegal drugs under supervision. That model has gained support among left-leaning and moderate lawmakers as a way to prevent fatal overdoses but has faced criticisms from some who worry that it makes drug problems worse.
“Stick” is slang for gun. The group developed out of the turmoil of 2016, when violence in Chicago surged to its highest level in 20 years, with more than 700 homicides and 3,500 shootings. A group of community organizers concerned about the violence held a series of listening sessions.