09/01/2026
PART ONE- FIRE*ARM ACCIDENT PREVENTION
🚨This is a public service post, not a political post.🚨
This offer was recently posted on Johnson County's official FB page promoting fire*arm accident prevention in response to Smart Kid's Week. It is worth posting if it brings enough awareness to prevent even one tragic accident.
If you choose to have a fire*arm in your home, you can get a FREE security lock from Johnson County. There will be several links to this subject in the comments.
As a disclaimer, the author of this post is a 50 year resident of LF neighborhood and worked with children in the Iowa City area for many years. This included areas of education, volunteering on a couple of boards that served children in our area, and family and children's ministry. A personal experience led me to be involved in the first fire*arm accident prevention program in our county starting back in the 1990's. Because of that traumatic event, I helped support a mother who lost her son, Matthew, to a hunting-related accident back in 1991. (Matthew's parents, Ruby and Gene later divorced and his father is a current resident of LF neighborhood. We post this with respect to his family and to honor the life of Matthew Hanson.) Matthew had been a student at Mark Twain and was a classmate with our daughter. The family moved to a new home in Coralville, but we continued to connect because we attended the same church where I helped lead the children's department. Matthew was one of my students. Life changed forever for Matthew, his parents, and his sister on November 30, 1991. Matthew was accidently shot and killed by his uncle who was cleaning his fire*arm after a day of hunting . The accident occurred in a garage on the uncle's property in Iowa County. It left the parents inconsolable. As time went on I reached out to Matthew's mom and asked if I could help honor Matthew's memory in any way. I had experience organizing kid's events in the Iowa City area, and I offered to help create an event or a memorial that would remind people of the need for fire*arm accident prevention and honor Matthew's memory in some small way. We met up and started brainstorming and learned that there wasn't a fire*arm accident prevention program locally, so we started what we called the "Matthew Group", named after Matthew and in the spirit of Matthew 10:29. Matthew's mom, Ruby, worked hard doing research and creating an educational pamphlet. We resourced and gave away lots of educational material provided by a national organization. We created displays and activities that we presented at various public events. Ruby was naturally more reserved so I did the public presentations and she did the organizing. This group soon merged with Johnson County's Safe Kids Coalition, through Mercy Hospital where Ruby and I became members. We continued to present at farm-related events and other similar venues. The basic safety recommendations were similar to the "Stop, drop, and roll" used with fire safety. It included large visual graphics of what children should do if they found a fire*arm or were in the presence of a friends was playing with one:
*STOP!📍(Stopsign)
*DON"T TOUCH! 🤚 (Hand put up)
*LEAVE THE AREA! 👟 (Foot running away)
*TELL AN ADULT!👄 (Mouth speaking to tell)
*The next transition was to move on from being involved hands on at those events to incorporating fire*arm accident prevention in the Iowa City School's health curriculum. Ruby worked tirelessly on this. Eventually it was included right along with topics like fire safety, bike safety, water safety, and other similar topics in the school curriculum. It felt like the mission was accomplished. Safety education was becoming more common and it continues to be as demonstrated here by this offer from Johnson County.
I will link some more info in the comments and do a follow-up post.
The next post will focus on the history of Lucas Farms as seen from the compelling stories of victims who were accidentally shot. After researching LF history for over a decade, I have come across a number of fire*arm accident stories, mostly related to hunting. I will post Part 2 later tonight.
