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Ex-officer picked to spread word on gun safety

By: Phyllis Side, August 14, 2001

CALEDONIA - As a parent and a former police officer, Shirley Lochowitz knows the damage a loaded gun can do to a family.

Her don was seriously injured in a shooting accident six years ago.

Lochowitz has been speaking on gun safety ever since and recently she became the spokesman for the National Crime Prevention Council's "Unload and Lock" campaign to encourage people to store their firearms safely.

On Monday afternoon, Kellie Foster of the National Crime Prevention Council and Stacey McArdle of the Advertising Council stopped by Lochowtiz's home to interview the former police officer.

Since Aug. 10, 1995, gun safety in the home is of paramount importance to Lochowitz.

That day, Lochowitz was on patrol as a Caledonia police officer and got a call about a shooting. The address was familiar. It was the home she had given her oldest son permission to visit that day. When she got to the scene, Lochowitz discovered her the-12-year-old son, Nick, had been shot in the stomach.

Nick had been shot with his 14-year-old friend's rifle. It had been stored loaded under the friend's bed with his parents' permission, Lochowitz said.

She has been sharing the events of that day with others in the hope that her story will prevent it from happening to other families.

Foster and Lochowitz became acquainted when a letter from Lochowitz struck a chord with Foster.

"It really caught my attention and I connected with Shirley because my brother was killed by three young men with a stolen gun. A half million guns are stolen from homes each year," Foster said.

The letter inspired Foster to ask Lochowitz to be the campaign's spokesperson, Lochowitz said.

Many of the guns that were used in the high-profile school shootings were taken from homes where they were unsecured, Foster said.

The interview will be part of a media segment that also includes interviews with the Crime Prevention Council's chief executive officer and the chief executive officer of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The segment will be used as part of the campaign.

The campaign's goal is to get a good educational message to the public, Foster said.

"We don't take a position on gun ownership. We are nonpartisan. Our message is, is your gun stored safely, unloaded with ammunition locked separately," Foster said.

The campaign, planned to extend over three years, includes television, radio, print, and out-of-home public service messages distributed nationwide, according the "Unload and Lock" Web site, www.unloadandlock.com .

The public service campaign has five objectives:

	To change attitudes about importance of safe storage by educating those who have guns in the home about dangers to children, teens and adults.
	To increase knowledge about safe storage options and their applicability to a wide range of firearms.
	To increase recognition that firearms use in both fatal and nonfatal shootings is the result of opportunity, curiosity, or passion, for the most part, and that safe storage practices could reduce those deaths and injuries as well as the impact they have on survivors, including children.
	To increase awareness of the social and economic costs of avoidable firearms injuries and deaths, and how safe storage can reduce those costs that we all share.
	To increase behaviors, especially safe storage practices by those who choose to keep firearms in their homes, that reduce risks of injury and death from firearms.