Saints fans attending the final game of the season returned to their cars to a devastating and yet all too familiar sight: shattered glass and missing belongings. Among the stolen items were several guns, a common target for smash-and-grab burglars.

New Orleans is in the middle of a violent crime wave that is fueled by illegal firearms, many stolen from automobiles. Citizens, understandably concerned about safety, are more likely to arm themselves, invariably leading to unsecured firearms left in vehicles. Knowing this, criminals conduct mass break-ins to acquire more illegal firearms.

Is there anything that can be done to help break this cycle, drive down violence and restore a feeling of public safety?

In addition to improved law enforcement efforts and increased violence prevention interventions, a well-developed campaign to increase secure storage of firearms could have a meaningful impact on reducing gun violence and crime in our community. If successful, we could reduce the supply of illegal guns and potentially change our community’s all too casual culture surrounding firearms.

A safe-storage campaign cannot simply involve politicians or public health officials promoting safe storage or conducting mass handouts of inexpensive trigger locks; that’s a campaign that is sure to fail and could possibly increase resistance to safe gun storage.

Instead, we must advocate for newer devices that provide almost immediate access to the gun owner through biometric fingerprint activation or a code and can be secured and locked in vehicles.

Most importantly, to change behaviors and attitudes, a successful campaign must employ the following five principles:

1. Use credible messengers. Understanding who are the credible messengers to convince owners of the critical importance of safe gun storage (e.g., firearm experts, combat veterans) and involving those individuals in messaging is essential.

2. Respect desire for self-protection. Safe storage campaigns must respect those who believe firearm possession increases safety. Challenging this belief will promote resistance to safe storage. Instead, a message campaign needs to demonstrate how current storage devices provide rapid access while minimizing danger to others.

3. Involve firearm advocacy groups. Any successful safe storage campaign cannot devolve into a debate on the Second Amendment. Firearm enthusiasts and firearm safety training instructors can be strong advocates for safe storage.

4. Include faith-based communities. Religious leaders have an important and influential voice in directing behavior. Including church leaders in messaging and using churches for device distribution could lead to increased compliance.

5. Provide basic firearm safety training to youth. Most young adults and older children have had no formal instruction in firearm safety. Misinformation is likely acquired through informal social experiences. Through access to youth through health classes and health clinics, we could provide formal firearm safety training that emphasizes dangers of casual firearm attitudes as well as steps to ensure safety.

Would this kind of safe storage campaign work? The truth is that we don’t know.

Our city has a long history of casual attitudes to firearms. Our favorite son, Louis Armstrong, was arrested in 1912 for firing a handgun into the air on New Year’s Eve. One hundred and ten years later, the airport named in his honor reported the nation’s highest rate of TSA handgun seizures reflecting the continued frequency of casual handgun carrying.

A well-developed safe storage campaign could be part of the change needed to make our hometown a safer place by immediately taking illegal guns off the street and reforming our casual attitudes toward firearms.

Joseph Constans, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a research professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He is a faculty member within Tulane's Violence Prevention Institute and an investigator on the CDC-funded Center for Youth Equity: A Community Centered Approach to Youth Violence Prevention.

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