Video: Cayman Naib’s Father Speaks About Dangers of Gun Ownership

“I want to do 14 good things,” says Farid Naib, “one for every year of Cayman’s life.” This is how the father of Cayman Naib — the 13-year-old Shipley student who died by suicide in March — explains his participation in a new Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence video about the dangers of keeping a gun in the house.

Farid’s gun had been purchased 30 years prior to Cayman’s death “for personal protection.” When his children were born he bought a trigger lock for the gun, but didn’t throw the firearm away, which he now regrets. In fact, the trigger lock was still in place when Cayman used the gun to end his life; it did not prevent the gun from firing. Farid says he’d forgotten about the gun, and had no idea that Cayman knew about it.

The video, which coincides with National Suicide Prevention Week, highlights how quickly things can go wrong for kids, who lack the perspective to realize things are not as dire as they seem. Farid and his two children had just returned from a ski trip, and “life was about as good as it could be.” But after Cayman received an email from school saying he was failing a course, he found the gun, took it to a remote section of the family’s large property and killed himself. “This was in the space of 20 or 30 minutes,” says Farid, who’d always believed there’d be warning signs if a child was contemplating suicide. “There were none. Kids get upset. And they make bad decisions when they’re upset. Having a gun in house that they can access, you give them the ability to make that bad decision permanent.”

Farid says in the video that the pain of his son’s loss “is unbearable. If I had not had a gun in the house, I would not be experiencing it.”

For confidential support if you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Learn about the warning signs of suicide at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

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