St. Louis School Spends Week Teaching Gun Safety
On Thursday night, August 28, 2025, St. Margaret of Scotland School presented a 60-minute discussion co-sponsored by the SMOS PTA and Gun Sense: For the Common Good, as part of continuing its participation in the second-annual SMART Week – to spread the word on the critical importance of secure gun storage to prevent gun violence.
Thank you to everyone who came out that night for the Be SMART presentation AND to those who returned the Parent ‘Be SMART’ Pledges to school this year! If you haven’t completed the pledge yet, and would like more information, a copy of it is provided below. Parents can continue to send the signed pledges into school@stmargaretstl.org or just drop them off in the school office.
As always, it is fantastic to see the SMOS community taking the time to focus on this important issue of gun safety and kids.
KMOV was on hand to cover the story as well. We present their report below:
By Shawn Loging
Published: Aug. 28, 2025 at 10:29 PM CDT
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) – Framing the conversation to put focus on safety made it all the more relevant after the shooting on Wednesday in Minneapolis, hundreds of miles away from St. Louis.
It was very much on the minds of those at a gun safety lesson for parents at St. Margaret of Scotland School in St. Louis on Thursday night. It included hearing from a mother whose children survived the CVPA School shooting, who knows what it means to be a parent going through a school shooting.
The discussion on Thursday is part of SMART Week at SMOS, aimed at spreading education on the importance of secure gun storage to prevent gun violence.
“I think it’s a hard topic to talk about, it could feel really uncomfortable, but it’s really important, especially in our world today,” said parent of SMOS School students Alex Saracino.
Parent of SMOS School students, Christina Meddows-Jackson said, “My first grader asked me to come, and he’s kind of a little bit of a loose cannon, so when he thinks something is serious, then I probably should go.”
The school is partnering with Be SMART, becoming the first Be SMART school in St. Louis. Be SMART is a national campaign focused on responsible gun ownership and safe storage to reduce gun deaths and gun violence, especially impacting kids.
The school has held an assembly and done in-class programming. This is the second year St. Margaret of Scotland School has held SMART Week and the third year this program has been held for parents.
SMOS Communication Coordinator Michael Sonntag said, “Securing a gun is not a child’s responsibility. That is an adult’s responsibility and we are very clear with the children about that, however, you won’t take away from the fact that sometimes things are not safe for kids, and they need to know what to do if they come across an unsecured weapon, so that we don’t have something unintentional happening, something tragic then happening.”
This week, SMOS is also rolling out a program called Be SAFE, a curriculum the school developed to teach children in conjunction with the Be SMART program.
“To go hand-in-hand with the already established national Be SMART program, which is for parents. For the kids, we are doing this actually as a pilot program for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, with the goal being that as we build this, this will be something that will hopefully roll out to all the schools in the Archdiocese,” said Sonntag.
Holding this SMART week was planned before the events on Wednesday, when Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed when a shooter opened fire at a Mass that hundreds of students at Annunciation Catholic School attended.
That is making this more timely.
“Our kids were actually in the BeSMART yesterday when the shooting happened and they’d been in church early yesterday, so definitely, it strikes so close,” said Meddows-Jackson.
Thursday night, part of that program for parents like Meddows-Jackson and Saracino included hearing from another parent, Emily Schiltz. She is the mother of two students who survived the Oct. 24, 2022, shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in South City.
A former student entered the school and shot and killed 15-year-old Alexzandria Bell and gym teacher Jean Kuczka.
Schiltz would reunite with her kids outside of the school, but she detailed her experience that day from the text messages from her children to seeing them outside.
“There are no easy words to describe surviving as a family in a school shooting. Our family’s life has a before and after. We will never be free of the pain and trauma and loss, and we weren’t even one of the families that lost a child. There is PTSD. There’s constant fear. There is a reframing of life, and it never leaves you,” said Schiltz.
She added, “Living through it is much worse than you’re imagining and there is much more that can be done than it feels like it.”
The experience inspired her to make a difference in keeping children safe and sees hope that something can be done.
“A lot of people in our current society like to draw things to simple black and whites, and we live in a time when things have become very political. I don’t know anyone who actually thinks keeping children safe and alive is a political issue, so inside the gun safety conversation, there is a lot of space that has nothing to do with politics. For example, simply having guns by responsible gun owners, stored safely, is estimated to be able to reduce up to a third of unintentional gun deaths,” said Schiltz. “There are a lot of non-political that are safe for everyone across any political, cultural spectrum that can keep kids safe. If we can find more space to have conversations like that, not about legislation that makes people feel more afraid, or people that fear they may lose some rights, but instead spaces where we say, let’s sit together and talk about ways to keep kids safe, then we can find a path forward.”
Parents participating in Thursday’s event said they’ve seen from past programs like this are making them more conscious to ask when at another family’s house if there are firearms there and if they’re secured.
“I feel like our community, everybody is just so thoughtful and guns. They can be really dangerous for kids that don’t know anything about them. They’re in the home. We’ve all heard the stories of a kid who stumbled upon a gun and bad things have happened. Education is power, knowledge is power. Teaching these kids and parents,” said Meddows-Jackson, “how to handle this in our home is priceless. It could be lifesaving.”
A lesson they’re seeing their kids take to heart.
“We’ve always talked about guns in our home and guns safety and I think to talk about it in their wider school community has been a really good thing for them and to hear about it from other professionals,” Saracino.
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