Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl! And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Today is National Safe Day. Let's get started. This day was created by the Brooklyn Maymolar Foundation.
And it's all about bringing awareness to responsible gun ownership and preventing senseless child deaths due to guns. So, SAVE is an acronym, and it stands for secure all firearms. Ask if friends have guns. Frequently talk with kids about the dangers of guns in handling them and to educate and empower others to be safe, according to the acronym.
Now, today we're going to be talking about the A in this acronym. Ask if friends have guns. So, I have a panel, if you will, of two other podcasters. We're all moms, and we're discussing this part because this is something that we've never been asked, and we've never thought to ask anyone, whether or not there are guns in the homes of the families where our children go to play when we're not around.
And so, these are some excerpts. I'm going to apologize ahead of time. There was some background noise that got picked up in our recording that in some cases, it almost overpowers what's being said. But I could not scrap this conversation because there are a lot of gems in here.
There's a lot of things to think about. And, therefore, like I said, I apologize up front. But please, I hope you enjoy the episode. Can we get a new ever-out?
Anybody that? I have never asked that. And when I saw the question, because I'm the mom that before my kids can go, I'm in their house, I'm looking around, I'm seeing who's there. But that question has never been a thought.
I have older boys. My younger one is eight. And he's the one that is super curious. He's super like, invades people's privacy and space.
I'm like, wow, he hasn't done any overnight sleepovers. I haven't really gone to anybody's house yet. But that is definitely a question that I'm going to add to my arsenal of questions, which before you pose that, I've never even been a thought. And I wonder, though, how many families are like that where they haven't thought about that.
I mean, because before I started doing the research on what National Safe Day was, I was like, I really don't know what that means. Safe about what? And then I started seeing it. And I'm like, oh, wow.
And then it just hit me the other day. I'm like, you know what? Let me see what other people are saying. Am I the only one?
But it's interesting that the majority of the people said no, they hadn't asked that question before. They also said they would not have a problem asking. So it's almost kind of like it turned the life over on. And they're like, hmm, I didn't think about that question.
Question number one, that will be asking here on out. Yeah, even after that, after you posed the question, I did the perfect and I thought, I don't mean to have to have my kids play home. And I think about things like a family in the house. If someone comes to the family, I know they don't have fun.
I'm like, okay, I'm happy to sit there. I'm thinking I want other kids. I got my son's coming out over. I know his family is a military family.
And I don't think that it would. But still, you just never know. And I've never thought to have that conversation. And you like, you say it was really a real light bulb moment.
And I just want to say thank you for putting that out there. Because again, you opened up, you're answering me for trying to find out how we need to persuade these questions. It was definitely a light bulb moment for me. And how to facilitate that question?
I don't know. But I work in mental health. And we're taught, you just ask the hard questions upfront. Like there's no way to, you don't go around them.
Like you don't ask someone, for example, if someone is thinking of suicide, you don't say, like do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to kill yourselves? So with that question, I would have to just be direct. Like, hey, bro, you got guns in the house?
Well, you know, Taneka, I thank you for letting us know as far as on the mental health aspect of it, how you go about asking questions because I'm not like an in-your-face site person. So to say, you have a gun in your house? Where do you need it? Do you keep it away from the ammunition?
Is there a bullet in the gun now? Like, you know, how to even approach that in the gun that you don't beat around the bullet? You just spin out and say, hey, I got a question and I need to know this before I can allow my kid to come over. I feel like my perspective is a little different because I had a son who was born with a birthday bag and asked for a month's soul.
And there was nothing that you could do about it. We couldn't prevent him from passing through. And I'm just a little girl I have now and over backwards to make sure that I keep her safe in situations and I can control. I can control.
I can control, you know, there's a place out of the street or not. And this is at a time, I can control, yeah, there's someone's house that has guns or not. Have you been asked that question from other people? No.
I haven't been asked that. And we actually do have a gun in our house and it is separated. I've never been asked that question and it honestly surprises me how you were talking about the things that are in our control and out of control. And I don't know if it is just from losing a child because I too have lost a child.
I don't know if it's that where you feel like, you know, or if it's just a parenting thing. I have to me, I would assume that it's an innate parenting thing, but it amazes me how many of my kids, friends and people just drop their kids off. They don't even come and have any type of conversation with me. I have to kind of go out and be like, Hey, I'm not a killer.
I'm not a counselor. Especially in the wake of everything that's going on in our country, black boys, brown girls, black girls. You never know. You know, you never know how people's mindsets are anything can happen.
And just knowing that, okay, this family has a means to commit it to do something, you know, and my kids. Gosh, this is a very layered, I think, conversation. You said that you have a gun in your house. We don't have one in an hour.
But like my daughter, because she hasn't been around the gun, she may think of that as like the water guns. So she was from your house and number of fun, your child may know that, but with mine. And you know, there's still more to, you know, more layers to the onion. I need to educate my child.
And there's so many types of guns. And like so. And what kids you have to be so specific because they don't play with a little gun. Just a big gun, I'll be like, yeah.
So would it be important because my oldest is 13? And now I don't feel like I'm sure enough, but moving forward, like, you can't get rid of them. And it is like saying this, waking that we're living in in the country, like you almost feel like we need to be protected. So is it right to teach our children if they're returning out from the handle of them?
They should not do because they think that they can toy and harm themselves. But if they're educated on how to properly hold a gun or how to put safety on it, are those conversations that we shouldn't have without children? And the minute that we forget that or they're out hanging with their buddies or what not in a common process situation, that they're prepared if we're not there to resolve it. I was just thinking, as you were talking, what you said, you know, when are they mature enough?
You know, and my question is when are they not mature enough? You know, when do we start these conversations early, I think, because I'm thinking back to what was that 2008, 2007, Little Tamir Rice was just playing outside playing. You know, he was a little boy playing. So when do you have that conversation?
How old is too old and how young is too young? For me, growing up in South Carolina, we had a class in high school. It was called Hunter Safety. And it was all about being safe around guns and proper way to handle them.
And we never got to handle them. So I thought that was interesting. Like they never gave us one and said, okay, now here's a gun. But I guess you can't do that in public school system.
It was because we were in the South. So yeah. But I think that for us, even learning that in high school was still too late. Just so happens that both of these lovely ladies are podcasters.
Enika, let's start with you. What's the name of your podcast? And tell us a little bit about it. All right.
Thank you so much. This is such a rich conversation. So thank you. Thank you.
It's refreshing to have these types of conversations. My podcast is Tuesdays with Tamika. It drops every Tuesday everywhere you can find podcasts. It is an inspirational Christian podcast where me and my sister, she's my co-host.
One of our taglines is we believe in lifting as we climb. So we love to, as God is elevating us and taking us higher, we want to bring people with us, you know, because there's a saying that it's lonely at the top, but we don't believe that it has to be. If you could find me at Tamika, under sports, Thomas, under sports, or Tuesday on Facebook, Instagram, IG, or Twitter, everywhere that social media. And Chintrell is here about what you have to offer.
I would like to start off by saying thank you for this opportunity. This is actually one of the first podcasts I've been to get for. So thank you. My podcast is called Seventy Podcast.
I consider it to be an inspirational motivational podcast. Just uplifting, sharing my own story. I feel like I've been through some things in life and I would like to share that with other people. Maybe they can learn from it or grow from it.
But just sharing my stories and just kind of what's going on and how we get through. And you can catch Seventy. Everyone say, you know, I'm on Instagram at Seventy underscore podcast as well as Facebook and Twitter. That was today's episode of Tweak Trends.
I hope you enjoyed it and that you were able to get past the background noise to really grasp the meat and potatoes of the issue at hand. I mean, just so from here, what I want you to do is take this conversation out into your arc of influence. Ask your friends who have kids. If they've ever been asked the question as to whether or not they have guns in the home or if they've asked other people and the types of responses that they got.
And we just really need to bring awareness to this because in my opinion, the loss of life due to senseless acts like children playing with guns in the home. That's something that we can definitely prevent. We can prevent this. So do me a favor.
Take this question out to your social media platforms and let's start talking. Okay. And in the meanwhile, while you're on your social media, hit me up at he that that's at H-E-E-V-E-T-E on both Twitter and Instagram. And have a great weekend and I'll see you guys back here on Tuesday.