Nunavik police campaign encourages gun owners to lock ’em up

The KRPF’s new gun safety campaign poster, pictured here, shows a baby crawling towards an unguarded rifle. “When firearms are not properly stored, unfortunate events can happen leading to tragedy,” the poster reads. (IMAGE COURTESY OF THE KRG)

“Got firearms? Lock ‘em!”

That’s the slogan at the heart of a new gun safety campaign being launched by the Kativik Regional Police Force next week, which is encouraging Nunavimmiut to make sure firearms are properly stored.

The regional campaign, a first for the KRPF, responds to an increase in firearm-related incidents that police have responded to this past year.

“This year there have been a lot of firearm incidents,” said KRPF chief Aileen MacKinnon, pointing to three violent stand-offs since the spring — one ending in the shooting death of its constable Steve Déry.

“Although we do prevention activities in the schools, we felt we should take it to another level.”

The campaign’s message: “When firearms are not properly stored, unfortunate events can happen leading to tragedy.”

The trilingual campaign poster asks gun owners to ensure their weapons are unloaded and locked when not in use.

The poster warns firearm users to keep their weapons out of reach of children, showing the image of a baby crawling towards an unguarded weapon.

“A small child may not know the difference between a toy gun and the real thing,” MacKinnon said. “So something as simple as taking out the bullets and putting on a lock can make a big difference.”

The new campaign aims to build on the current prevention program the KRPF oversees, which sends cadets into schools to do community gun safety presentations, and hand out free gun locks.

MacKinnon said the KRPF will be relaunching those community presentations in 2014, along with making gun locks available free to people in community police stations.

MacKinnon didn’t have recent statistics on the number of firearms in the region, but estimated that each Nunavik household likely has at least one.

But the issue has to do with how those guns are being used — calls to the KRPF involving firearms have increased by eight per cent so far this year, from 26 reported in 2012 to 28 reported in the first nine months of 2013.

MacKinnon said she hopes the campaign will help change that over time.

“We would like to see a decrease in the number of gun calls we get, and that when we go into homes, that guns are safely stored,” she said. “We also hope it gets people talking, and that maybe they’ll show up and pick up a lock.”

The KRPF will officially launch its new gun safety campaign at police stations across Nunavik in December.