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Parents should make sure there's no danger next door
There are guns in 4 of 10 homes with kids

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By: Rick Hampson

The call that made Shirley Lochowitz turn in her badge came on the second shift: a shooting on Nicholson Road, half a mile from her home in Caledonia, Wis.

The address sounded vaguely familiar, so as she drove to the scene, she radioed for more information. A 14-year-old, the dispatcher said, had shot a 12-year-old while cleaning his gun.

Lochowitz shuddered; her son nick was 12. There were no guns in her home, not even toy ones, but . . .

She asked who lived at the house. When she heard, she realized the home she was heading to was the one where she had told Nick he could play that afternoon. It hit her: "My son had been shot."

That was Aug. 10, 1995, a very lucky day for Nick Lochowitz: He lived.

But prodded by stories like his, and urged on by a growing number of physicians, some parents are asking an often difficult and occasionally embarrassing question when their kids play or stay at friends':

Do you have a gun in the house?

If so, is it safely stored?

 “It's just another question we ask, like ‘Will somebody be home?' and ‘What'll they be doing?' ” says Elaine Purchase of Carnation, Wash., a mother of four boys. “If you don't ask, you're defeating the purpose of keeping your own home safe.”

The gun question is the latest sign of how a growing concern with child safety prompts parents to take pre cautions that once might have seemed overcautious, obsessive, prissy or rude. ‘We used to blame child hood accidents on fate or God's will or ‘stuff happens,'” says Heather Paul, director of the National Safe Kids Campaign. “Now we believe the adult is responsible for the child's safety . . . Accidents are really preventable injuries.”

And so today's child is protected by car seats, bike helmets, childproof medicine caps, smoke detectors, electric-outlet covers, cabinet clasps — innovations that were opposed when proposed and often cursed when implemented.

But partly as a result of such minor annoyances, the rate of accidental death for kids has dropped 25% in the past decade. In this context, the gun question makes sense. Studies show that there are guns in four of 10 households with children; that about a quarter of those guns are not locked up; that the home of a friend or relative is the site of more than a third of accidental shootings of kids.

If a parent normally asks other parents hosting play dates what the kids will be eating or watching, why not ask about something potentially more damaging than too many chips or too many videos? The medical establishment — the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics — says parents should ask.

The academy recommends that its member physicians talk to parents as routinely about gun safety as they do about choking hazards and house hold poisons. Last year the academy ran a gun-safety training session for 104 pediatricians from across the nation.

They, in turn, have trained thou sands of health workers to talk to patients about the issue. But a survey last year, commissioned by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, found American parents divided on whether they'd asked about guns in the homes of their children's friends.

Thirty percent said they had asked; 61% said they'd never even thought of asking; and 6% said they had decided not to. Pediatricians who stress gun safety say that despite the statistical evidence of wide gun ownership, many parents don't believe anyone they know would keep a live 9mm in the nightstand for protection — not in their town. Or they don't believe that kids who so quickly discover hidden Christmas presents will find something of even greater fascination.

Put off by concern

Other parents who think about asking are reluctant .They say they don't want to offend other parents by seeming anti-gun or just nosy.

Karen Gooen raised the issue while sitting on the floor of her home in Randolph, N.J., with six other young mothers. “There was silence,” she recalls. “The rest of them looked at me like it was nobody's business whether they had a gun or not. They were defensive.”

Janet Morris of Clifton Park, N.Y., regularly asks about guns in homes where her children play. Most parents take it well, but one — who said she had a handgun, ‘just a small one I keep in my bedroom” — seemed put off by Morris' concern. Nevertheless, she agreed to let the children have their play date at the Morris house instead. “She probably thinks

I'm an idiot, but I figure I'd rather have that than a shooting,” Morris says.

Even pediatricians find the topic problematic, and most do not discuss gun safety with parents as part of routine visits. Even fewer urge them to ask about guns in others' homes. Mark Rosenberg, a pediatrician in Barrington, Ill., says he doesn't tell parents as often as he should to ask about guns where their kids visit. “Sometimes it's hard enough just to talk about gun safety in their own home,” he says.

Rosenberg also acknowledges that although his wife carefully inquires about conditions at houses where their kids play, she doesn't usually ask about guns. “It's a tough question,” he says.

But parents may be more receptive to it than generally thought The Handgun Control survey found that 41% think the question is always appropriate; 37% think it is under some circumstances. Only 10% think it's never appropriate

“I was surprised when (another mother) asked me,” says Betty Tonnelli of Yonkers, N.Y. “But when I thought about it, what's more important than your child's life?”

And, whatever the risk of asking, advocates say parents should consider the risk of not asking. Gun owners won't necessarily be offended by the question. ‘We have no problem as long as guns aren't singled out, as long as it's one question on a list of safety questions,” says Jim Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Ross Mathieu, 12, was fatally shot in a 1996 accident at a friend's house in New Bedford, Mass. His father, Marc, knew the friend's parents through church and business. It never occurred to him they had a gun.

“There's not a day that goes by that I don't cry for that kid,” Mathieu says. He vehemently advocates asking other parents about their guns. Often, when he speaks to parents groups, they tell him they couldn't ask the question. “I tell them, ‘How would you feel if you didn't ask and some thing happened? You could not survive the guilt . . . I was never warned. You have been.'”

When Shirley Lochowitz arrived at the house on Nicholson that August day more than three years ago, she found her son lying in the kitchen, propped against the basement door, barely conscious. His face was ashen. A washcloth covered the wound in his stomach. “I thought he was going to die in front of my eyes,” she says.

Nick had been shot with his friend's .22-caliber rifle, which, ac cording to police reports, the 14-year- old kept under his bed. It went off as he and a third boy, also visiting the house, were playing around.

Nick and the boy who shot him at tended the same Catholic middle school, but Lochowitz had never met the boy's parents nor visited their home. She just knew their reputation: a nice family. “It never crossed my mind there'd be a gun there,” she says. “I always kept mine locked and unloaded. I just assumed anyone else would do the same.”

The consequences

The call on Nicholson was Officer Lochowitz's last. She says she couldn't return to work. “People just don't understand the consequences” of such a shooting, she says. “They never think about what can happen with a gun in the home.”

But there's a postscript to her story that gun-control and child-safety advocates would not have written. She doesn't think questions about guns before play dates and sleepovers will become standard. “Some people say they'll ask, but I don't know if they really will — if it's practical or comfortable enough for them,” she says.

Despite what happened, she doesn't ask the question herself when Nick or her other school-age children, 12 and 9, play at someone else's home.

“I'd feel as if people would think I was poking into their privacy, even though people here would under stand after what happened.”

Told about Marc Mathieu's crusade, she concedes her attitude is not easy to explain or understand. “May be,” she says, “it's because his son died and mine didn't

“But I'd like to talk to him. Maybe he could convince me.”