Safety first at gun lockbox giveaway

MOSES LAKE — It was a little more crowded than usual at the Sportsman’s Warehouse on Saturday morning.

It seems giving away lockboxes for handguns and trigger locks for any firearm is a clear draw.

“These are always great events,” said Mark DelBeccaro, the chief medical officer at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the person in charge of organizing the Saturday giveaway.

“This is about keeping kids safe. It’s like bike helmets or life vests. If you have a gun, you should be safe with it,” DelBeccaro said.

Seattle Children’s teamed up with the Grant County Health District, Sportsman’s Warehouse, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and Samaritan Hospital to give away handgun lockboxes and trigger locks to encourage safe firearm storage.

“We have about 500 or each device,” said Heather Massart, a spokesperson for the Grant County Health District. “We had a huge rush this morning, and there are consistently people here.”

DelBeccaro said the giveaway is simply about encouraging safe gun storage, especially keeping kids safe from accidentally shooting themselves or someone else.

“Little kids don’t understand about guns, and teenagers have roller coaster emotions,” DelBaccaro said. “If you take 10 minutes to slow down a teenager, you can prevent a suicide or other things.”

“We believe in safety and we believe in protecting our youth,” Massart said. “You can never be too safe with a firearm.”

According to Cassie King, a program coordinator with Seattle Children’s Hospital, the hospital does these giveaways about four times a year across the state. They’ve been in the Tri-Cities and Wenatchee before, but never in Moses Lake.

The hospital tries to spread the giveaways out, so the next time they come back to the area, it’s not likely to be Moses Lake, King said.

Since the hospital started the giveaways in 2014, they’ve done 13, but only four of them in Eastern Washington.

“We’re getting a lot of people in here, and about half are in here for the first time,” said Bobbi Jo Harris, manager of the Moses Lake Sportsman’s Warehouse.

Harris said nearly all of the organizing work — including providing volunteers — was done by Seattle Children’s. All Sportsman’s Warehouse had to do was decide which day would be best.

And despite giving away a product Sportsman’s Warehouse sells, Harris said she is glad to host the giveaway.

“Yeah, I would like to have them come back,” she said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.