'Listen, be responsible': Polk League of Women Voters gives away gun locks to save lives
It sounds like it could be part of a stealthy and suspicious operation: Someone from Polk County drives four hours to Fort Lauderdale, meeting a supplier in an office parking lot to collect a package before driving back to pass along the contents for local distribution.
Though the details might vaguely resemble those of an illicit deal, the supply run is actually part of a mission intended to save lives.
Volunteers with the League of Women Voters of Polk County have been teaming with another chapter in Broward County to provide free gun locks to local residents. Since starting the campaign in May, the Polk chapter has distributed nearly 1,200 locks, its leaders say.
“Just about everybody has a gun tragedy story,” said Andy Crossfield, co-chair of the Polk group’s Gun Safety Committee. “So then, the volunteers get to thinking, ‘This is just a huge problem.’ But then you see the gleam in the eye of a volunteer when they hand over a gun lock and think to themselves, ‘I might have just saved a life by doing this.’ I’ve been volunteering for a long time, and I have never had the reward of volunteering with the possibility I may save somebody's life.”
The League of Women Voters, a national nonprofit founded in 1920, initially focused on voting rights and elections but has branched into other areas, such as health care, the environment and immigration. Though nonpartisan, the organization often advocates for left-of-center political ideas.
Crossfield, a Lakeland retiree, said the local chapter has ventured outside of its advocacy lane in the past. He cited an effort headed by Paula Mims, chair of the group’s Healthcare Action Team, to distribute blood-pressure monitors to high-risk pregnant women in Polk County.
Partnership with Broward
Crossfield learned earlier this year about the Broward County chapter’s program of giving away gun locks. He said he talked to Patricia Brigham, the former president of the Florida LWV, and she connected him with Barbara Markley, who leads the Broward chapter’s initiative.
Markley, the group’s co-chair of Violence Prevention, explained that she acquires the packaged gun locks from a local Veterans Administration office. The federal agency, through a suicide prevention program, gives away the cable locks, which fit through a gun’s chamber to prevent the trigger from being pulled.
The notion of distributing gun locks occurred to Markley in 2017 after she read about a pediatrician in Montana who was giving them away to families of her patients. She called the doctor, who informed her of the supply available from the VA. (Cable locks sold in stores cost between $10 and $50.)
The Broward chapter has now dispersed about 35,000 gun locks through partnerships with more than 200 organizations, Markley said. While a federal law passed in 2005 requires licensed sellers to include locks or storage devices with handgun sales, Markley cited a report that more than half of gun owners do not secure their weapons.
Under Florida law, anyone who stores a loaded firearm and knows that someone younger than 16 is likely to gain access to it without adult supervision must secure it with a lock or in a locked container.
Markley and Crossfield invoked a litany of grim statistics in discussing the need for securing guns:
Firearms are involved in more deaths of American children than any other cause, and those deaths rose 50% from 2019 to 2021.
4.6 million minors in the United States live in homes with at least one loaded, unlocked firearm.
Nearly 400,000 guns are stolen in the country every year.
Examples of children finding and using guns with tragic consequences can be found in Polk County. Last December, a 12-year-old boy visiting a friend in Lakeland with no adults at home found a loaded handgun in a parked vehicle and accidentally shot himself, dying soon afterward. The owner of the gun was charged with failing to safely store a firearm.
While effective in preventing accidents, cable locks are of limited deterrence if stolen because they can be broken with bolt cutters or other cutting devices.
'Listen, be responsible'
The League of Women Voters of Florida has adopted positions that gun-rights groups typically oppose, such as expanding background checks on sales and a three-day waiting period for all gun transfers. But Crossfield emphasized that with the gun locks campaign, his chapter is only encouraging safe storage of weapons.
The local chapter also distributes bumper stickers that say, “It’s easier to childproof your gun than bulletproof your child.”
“People recognize the severity of the problem, they just don't know what to do about it,” said Crossfield, a former officer with the LWV of Polk County. “And here's an issue where all we're saying is, ‘Listen, you know what comes with that gun? The responsibility to just secure it.' We're not asking to steal your weapons or confiscate guns or whatever. All we're saying is, ‘Listen, be responsible.’ "
Crossfield found an eager partner in Trudy Rankin of Lakeland, also a co-chair of the committee and a longtime LWV member. Having made a connection with Markley, they consulted with her about finding a supply of free gun locks to distribute.
So far, the Polk chapter has not established a source with a local VA office, and receiving the locks by mail is too costly, so volunteers have been driving to Fort Lauderdale periodically to pick up batches of locks from Markley.
“The first time, I had a friend who was playing golf with someone from Polk County, and she said, ‘He'll take the 700 gun locks to Polk County when he goes home,’” Markley said. “And then they sent someone down here and I met them in my parking lot at my office, and it was raining, so we found a covered garage.”
The Polk County members copied Markley’s strategy of approaching child-care centers to give away gun locks.
“What we did is one of our volunteers made 20 phone calls to daycare centers to ask them if they would like to get gun locks, and no one returned the phone calls — probably because they're working too hard, probably because they didn't trust us,” Rankin said.
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But Donna Brigman, a member of the Gun Safety Committee, is on the board of directors of the Early Learning Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes school readiness for at-risk children. She helped forge a partnership with the coalition to spread the word about the free gun locks.
LWV volunteers have since made deliveries to about a dozen daycare centers, Rankin said, stipulating that the locks not be sold or left unused. She said the locks are going to parents of children in the centers and perhaps to some employees.
Volunteers have also given away gun locks at such events as a Juneteenth celebration, the Pride in the Park gathering and back-to-school bashes, Rankin said.
Support from sheriff
Seeking to expand awareness of the effort, the LWV chapter contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Longtime Sheriff Grady Judd not only responded favorably, he agreed to record a public-service announcement with Crossfield and Melinda Mailly, a volunteer with the program.
In the 90-second video, Judd says that guns stolen from vehicles are the main source of stolen firearms in the United States. He warns against leaving a gun in an unlocked car or truck or overnight in any vehicle.
While promoting the use of gun locks, the LWV members also encourage parents to teach their children that if they come across a gun, they should leave it alone and tell an adult about it. Judd offers free gun locks while supplies last through the Sheriff’s Office at 863-298-6677.
“I'm a fierce supporter and defender of the Second Amendment,” Judd said in an interview. “I don’t believe you can own too many knives and too many guns. But I certainly support safe gun ownership, and, certainly, guns have to be secured so that young children who are not of age and are not trained to be safe and secure, won't accidentally get them and hurt themselves or someone else.”
Crossfield, who favors restricting ownership of assault-style weapons, acknowledged that the League of Women Voters tends to differ with Judd on political matters.
“Now, if you had told me that the League of Women Voters, basically a political organization, and the Sheriff's Department, particularly the Polk Sheriff's Department, would have anything in common, I would have told you you're insane,” Crossfield said. “But, sure enough, this is an issue that everybody can get behind.”
Crossfield’s chapter is also collaborating with a group that might seem a more natural ally, Moms Demand Action. Formed after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, the nonprofit advocates for such measures as increased background checks on gun purchases and “red-flag” laws.
Moms Demand Action has supplied volunteer drivers to deliver gun locks to daycare centers, Crossfield said.
While the project is focused on protecting children, the LWV leaders said that gun locks can avert violence against adults. A 2022 Stanford study found that adults living with a handgun owner were seven times more likely to be fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner than those in gun-free homes.
Crossfield also cited studies finding that the prevalence of suicide is much higher in homes with guns.
Markley, the LWV member in Broward County, likened the group’s gun-safety campaign to the early days of MADD — Mothers Against Drunk Driving, formed in 1980. It took years before that group’s message gained widespread acceptance, she said.
“Sometimes I wake up and I say, I can't believe I have to wake up every day and tell people that guns are dangerous,” Markley said. “It’s surreal. And the other thing that really is crazy is every single bottle in the drugstore has a child-resistant cap on it, by law, since the ‘70s, to protect children. Guns? Nothing.”
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While giving away gun locks, the Polk County group also wants to spread messages about gun safety. The chapter is distributing decals that bear the logos of both the LWV and the Sheriff’s Office and that read “Lock it or lose it. Be responsible. Secure your guns.”
Rankin said her hope is to see such stickers in the windows of convenience stores.
“And our hope — and I don't know if we can make this happen — is to talk to Sam's and Costco and various gas stations and as people are putting gas in their tanks, to put a sticker there that says, ‘Lock up your guns. Keep them safe in your car,’ ” she said.
To learn more
The League of Women Voters of Polk County seeks contributions to cover the expenses of distributing the gun locks. For more information, email gunsafety@lwvpolk.org.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk County group ramps up campaign to give away gun locks
