Talk To Your Kids About Guns, Grieving Father Pleads

ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA — The Alameda County District Attorney's Office and the distraught father of a 15-year-old boy who was killed in a gun accident said Wednesday that the beginning of summer is a good time to remind parents to talk to their children about gun safety.

District Attorney spokeswoman Teresa Drenick said, "Parents should ask a simple question and save lives by asking if there is a gun in the homes their children visit and if that gun is locked up."

She said, "We know that kids are out of school now and it's time to play and they go to their friends' homes."

Joining Drenick at a news conference at the District Attorney's Office, Griffin Dix said he wishes he had asked such a question to his son, Kenzo, before Kenzo went to the Berkeley home of his best friend, 14-year-old
Michael Soe, on May 29, 1994.

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Dix said Soe retrieved his father's Beretta 92 Compact L semiautomatic pistol from a camera bag and replaced the loaded ammunition magazine with an empty one, thinking he had unloaded the weapon. But he said
a bullet was still in the chamber when Soe pulled the trigger and aimed it at Kenzo, expecting to hear a click.

Dix said Kenzo, who was a freshman at Berkeley High School, died after a bullet was fired and went through his shoulder and into his heart. Dix said he and his wife, Lynn Dix, "were devastated, shocked and dumbfounded" by their son's death.

Dix said, "I never considered if there was a gun in the home and didn't think to ask."

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Drenick said the District Attorney's Office is partnering with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the American Academy of Pediatrics in the ASK (Asking Saves Kids) Gun Safety Campaign.

Drenick said one out of three homes in the U.S. with children has a gun, nearly 1.7 million children live in a home with a loaded and unlocked gun and every day eight kids are shot in unintentional gun shootings which
experts say could be prevented.

She said when children visit someone else's home, their parents shouldn't be embarrassed to ask the other children's parents if they have guns and if they are stored where children can get to them.

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Drenick said, "There are ways to pose the question that's not off-putting or embarrassing."

She said parents should ask about the presence of guns in homes their children visit because "kids are curious" and often find loaded guns that aren't safely secured and could cause deadly accidents.

— Bay City News; Image via Newark Police Department