TOLEDO, Ohio — Terry Awls grew up in Toledo and said although the city has changed in his time, that doesn't mean it's a place families can't be raised.
"We've harped on stopping the gun violence here in our city and in our state and in our country," Awls said. We have to do a better job of that. It doesn't mean that Toledo's less safe than any other city. It really doesn't."
His son, Braden, is a senior on the Central Catholic High School football team committed to the University of Toledo. Central Catholic was playing against Whitmer High School Friday night when three people were shot. Awls was in the stands when the shooting happened and gave credit to both schools for their quick response.
"The collaboration on that was absolutely fantastic," Awls said. "They did a really good job making sure everybody was safe."
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said Tuesday that government and police can look into the mirror after shooting incidents, but emphasized the number of guns in the U.S. as a factor in gun violence.
"We are the only country on planet Earth where these kinds of events happen with any regularity," Kapszukiewicz said. "At least one of the reasons is because we're the only country on Earth where there are more guns than human beings. We're the only one."
Figures from a 2018 study by the Small Arms Survey, which is headed by Political Science lecturer Aaron Karp at Old Dominion University, corroborate this claim. According to the survey, 393,347,000 firearms were in civilian possession in the United States in 2017. At the time, the U.S. population clocked in at 326,474,000, nearly 67 million fewer than the number of firearms.
Behind the U.S. in terms of gun ownership is India and China, the two most populous countries in the world, whose civilian firearm possession come in at 71 million and 49 million, respectively.
Awls said incidents like the shooting at the Whitmer football game are scary, but it doesn't change the way he looks at high school sports events.
"I don't think anybody should feel like they can't go to a high school game, a basketball game, a football game, or a soccer game in the area, because Toledo is a really good place to live," he said.