Keeping Guns Out Of Unsafe Hands

Yetide Badaki, ActressProducer, Activist
Safer Country Spokesperson and Advisory Committee Honorary Chairperson

In 2025, Safer Country will be prioritizing:

— expanding our red flag law public awareness campaign within Fairfax County and the City of Alexandria, and to other jurisdictions;

— working with military veterans to reduce gun suicides by military veterans;

— updating Virginia’s domestic violence protection orders law to prohibit respondents to ex parte orders from possessing firearms and requiring surrender or to encourage victims, survivors, advocates, and lawyers to ask the judge to explicitly prohibit the respondent from having firearms in the terms of the ex parte order;

— adding a penalty for someone convicted of misdemeanor for brandishing a gun so that there is a loss of a right to possess a gun for a reasonable period of time;

— promoting the adoption of Connecticut’s Ethan’s law, a comprehensive safe and secure storage law, in Virginia; and,

— urging the adoption of legislation to pass a special tax on the sale of guns and ammunition to better fund injuries and other related costs caused by gunfire.

As well, we will be challenging the Fairfax County Sheriff’s policy on people seeking to voluntarily turn in their guns for mental health reasons, which was described by a government official this way:

“A person with a weapon in crisis can and should give a friend or trusted associate temporary possession of the weapon. It is in the best interest to draw up a document and have it notarized around how long the person will relinquish possession of the weapon etc. and return when the individual is no longer in crisis.

The second option is to turn the weapon into the sheriff’s office but, they do not recommend this course of action. Resecuring the weapon can be cumbersome because the person would have to go through multiple protocols to prove they are no longer in crisis before the weapon can be returned.”

Safer Country is a 501(c)(3).  Contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.


Read Safer Country Executive Director Paul Friedman’s 10/10/23 Op/Ed on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s refusal to take federal funds to prevent mass shootings and suicides, including military suicides.

It was published in the Richmond Times Dispatch and republished in The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.

Learn about the Gun Violence & ERPO (Extreme Risk Protection Order) Study.

This study was commissioned by The Joyce Foundation.

URGENT:  If you feel concerned about your mental health and are in need of special help, call 988, the SUICIDE & CRISIS LIFELINE.