In December 2011, Ashlyn Melton said goodbye to her son Noah as he headed off to a friend’s house for a sleepover. The Louisiana mom had no idea it would be the last time she ever saw her son alive. Hours later, when she received a call in the middle of the night that Noah was in trouble, she thought perhaps he and his friend had gotten caught pulling pranks on the neighbors. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw as she pulled up to Noah’s friend’s home. In an essay on TODAY.com, Melton wrote:
Cop cars, an ambulance, fire trucks, and caution tape surrounded the house. I jumped out of the truck. Someone asked if I was Noah’s mother. Once I said yes, I was given the horrible news. Noah was shot by his friend, at his friend’s house, with an easily accessible gun.
Melton’s precious son was dead. Shot, she says in a video accompanying her essay, by Noah’s friend, with one of the four guns he had on his bedroom floor.
Melton, a gun owner herself, was floored that the 13-year-old boy had access to loaded guns. She says that although her son Noah was raised around guns, their family guns were locked in a gun safe, and he did not have access to them. She says:
Noah was raised around guns. He went hunting for the first time when he was 3 years old. The difference between us and a lot of other gun owners is that we understand the power a gun can have when not in the right hands or is handled improperly. Guns should be locked and kept away from curious children. They were definitely not allowed in my son’s room.
None of the gun safety knowledge she had instilled in Noah saved him that night. He was, she says, “at the mercy of other people. And, sadly, I never imagined that other parents were not as responsible as I am. I never thought to ask his friend’s parents about how they stored their guns because I naively assumed everyone was like me.”
That’s why, in Noah’s honor and memory, Ashlyn wrote her essay on TODAY to publicize National ASK Day, which is every year on June 21st.
Today, Ashlyn is begging parents to take the time to ask the adults in the other homes their kids play in and spend time in if they have guns and if so, if they are kept safely locked up and away from children.
“Do the other parents feel like you are invading their privacy?” Ashlyn wonders, “I’m sorry, but asking about a gun in order to keep a child safe is not a privacy issue. Child death by negligence is far more important than the privacy issue.”
